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CNN Live At Daybreak
Bloomberg Wins in New York City
Aired November 07, 2001 - 06:09 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KAGAN: Now for more on the mayor's race in New York City, you might have gone to bed wondering who won - well the next mayor of New York City will be Republican billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Anthony Johnson of our affiliate WABC is with us once again.
Anthony, last we saw you, you were in a polling place early yesterday morning. Now we know the results of that voting.
ANTHONY JOHNSON, CNN AFFILIATE WABC: Good morning to you Daryn and good morning everybody. Yes we do know the results - the new mayor - the 108th mayor of New York City will be billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg. He pulled out a victory yesterday - it wasn't a big one. He got about 50 percent of the votes, just a little bit over 50 percent of the votes, but Democratic challenger Mark Green got about 47 percent of the votes.
I guess you would have to say the big reason why he pulled out this victory is probably because he did get the support of the current Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. That was big in this race and also after the September 11th terror attacks here in New York City, things started to really start to show that it was going to change in this campaign.
A lot of people here in New York started to be concerned about the economy after the terror attacks, and I guess they started to feel that Michael Bloomberg probably was the man to bring the economy together and also we were starting to hear things about unity. Now the Democratic Party was having some problems with that because there was a lot of bickering as far as Mark Green's campaign was concerned and in the Democratic Party because of a very tough runoff that he went through - he tried to shore up the base of the Democratic Party.
He spent the last couple of weeks trying to do it, but in the end it simply just slipped away and it just did not happen for Mr. Green. So Mark Bloomberg or rather Michael Bloomberg will now become the 108th mayor here in New York City and I guess Rudy Giuliani and all the Republicans in this area have to be happy with the results of yesterday's election.
Daryn.
KAGAN: And for people who don't know New York like I'm sure you do, I don't think people appreciate how heavily democratic New York City is. This truly was a race for Mark Green to lose. JOHNSON: Yes. You know after the runoff back on October the 11th, all of the experts were saying that the only way Mark Green could lose this race is if he actually just gave it all away and I guess in the end that's what he did. In New York we have a five to one democrat to republican voting majority and it's quite a surprise, but a lot of the democratic voters were starting to shift sides and they were saying the best thing that they could do for the city right now is to bring in somebody that at least had the support of Rudolph Giuliani who has become America's mayor.
He's become very popular and also somebody that would know how to deal with the economy. We lost a lot of jobs, a lot of businesses, a lot of people are out of work here in New York since September 11th. So New Yorkers felt we needed somebody that could help bring that back together and with the endorsement of Rudolph Giuliani that just took Mr. Bloomberg right over the top.
KAGAN: Well speaking of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, any word about what his plans will be come the new year.
JOHNSON: Well you know nobody has talked about that. Once again, there was some talk that he would stay in office for another couple of months after that. But it's interesting - it'll be interesting to see exactly what the mayor is going to do. It'll be a couple of years before he can make any decisions on making any runs here in New York as far as possibly going for the governor's race.
We don't know if that'll be the case. So nobody knows about anything as of yet. We haven't had any inklings. There's been talk that he might go ahead at one time and become the new commissioner of major league baseball. He said that was only a rumor, but you know, he's a great Yankees fan. They didn't won the World Series. He's a great Yankees fan, so that might be a position that if it came about, he would be interested in.
KAGAN: He would, if he did get that position, he'd have two fewer teams to watch over and we'll have more on that story ahead. Anthony Johnson, it's been good to have you with us the last couple of mornings here. Thanks for joining us from WABC.
JOHNSON: Thank you very much Daryn.
KAGAN: It's good to have you with us.
JOHNSON: Thank you.
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