The Risks and Rewards of Thompson’s New Site

Bill Thompson just opened a new website designed by Blue State Digital, which also designed Barack Obama’s campaign site.

First of all, I’m increasingly inclined to give my qualified support Thompson for mayor – I don’t know if it was pure election-grandstanding, but it seems like every time he  makes a public announcement of some kind, like his workaround of the MTA fare-hike, it’s generally sensible, effective, and conscious of class dynamics in the city (for instance, as Comptroller he got city pension funds to remove their money from companies that privatise formerly public housing in the city).

But that’s beside the point – I think this will be a test case in how well folks other than Obama can use his organizing model in their campaign strategy.  While I trust that Blue State won’t apply the Obama model whole-cloth, many of the central elements of the Obama campaign revolved around him specifically, and might not translate well into other campaigns.  When someone wins, it always makes their system look better than it probably is, and thevalidity of the organizing model will be need to be tested in a vareity of contexts.

Here are some of the risks I see in adopting the Obama model:

-Looking like an Obama hanger-on: to stick in people’s minds, you need to develop a distinctive personality.  The individualist tendancy in American politics asks that politicians be in a way self-made.  Trying to ride the coattails too overtly undermines credibility and might hurt the campaign.

-Social Media can hurt too: trying to mobilize folks via twitter/Facebook/etc. can become a conspicuous display of a lack of support as well.  Having 50 people on a Facebook group demonstrates weakness in a citywide or statewide campaign.  Thompson should be  sure that embracing new media will build support among his target constituencies before over embracing the technology.

-You need a good story: Obama mobilized a series of glittering generalities based on his personal story.  Thompson needs to develop a central story that reduces to a short-worded theme and three key policy proposals to organize people behind the campaign.  One of the clear differences between Obama and Thompson’s site is the lofty quote Obama put on the top of every page.  Thompson doesn’t have the same type of cred, or story to get people together.

Symbolizing the NYC Mayor

work with this. from Tony the Misfit's flickr

Obama’s campaign ran on a series of wildly effective symbols and phrases that drove the campaign to the electoral and political heights we see today.  Watching returns and his acceptance speech last night, you could see how he drew on an immensely powerful set of tropes and symbols used to define the nation and his role in it.

The next important election I see is the New York City Mayoral campaign.  I think it’s wildly important to get Mayor Bloomberg out of office ASAP, and I want to work to make it happen.

Any opposition to Bloomberg doubtless will try to pivot off of the Obama Hope and Change messages, but it seems like cities lack the same type of empty-ish symbolic tools that made his message possible.  That should be the first task of any mayor going in to this campaign, seeing the changed look and feel of politics: develop new symbols – both visual and rhetorical – that represent a new city, a new sense of hope, and a united front against the narrow interests that have come to control this city

Mayoral Race Shaping Up

Avella at Atlantic Yards. from Tracy collin's flickr.

Tony Avella put out his first campaign literature of the Mayoral Campaign just as Bloomberg got his way on term limits. I think the themes on his first page – “a fighter for our neighborhoods” and “the revolution” (!) will shape up as the key themes of the campaign. With Bloomberg planning to run another all out $50 million plus campaign, challengers will need to mobilize natural constituencies – class most importantly. Bloomberg’s effort to upscale the city amounts to a spatial class-war, pushing poor folks to the margin of the city.

Avella’s rhetoric and his appearance at Atlantic Yards (above) shows how his campaign plans to approach dealing with the changing face of the city. I’m interested to see how it works out – I think there’s a risk with being so overt about the class terms used (the election isn’t actually a revolution and Avella is no Che), and I think there’s a good chance the community/grassroots organizer vote will be split among a number of candidates, including at least one that pulls a John Kerry and makes a ‘viability’ appeal the center of their campaign.

Why Bloomberg Shouldn’t Run pt. 3.1 Million

he's on yr teevee. from .HS. flickr photostream

This post from Gothamist shows exactly why Bloomberg shouldn’t be allowed to run again – because it shows how an endless incumbency allows for a manipulation of city resources to control elections. Bloomberg (or whoever wants to be Mayor-for-life) can game around money to deputize the entire political class of New York to work for him. Bloomberg’s manipulation of Mayoral money – and his re-distribution of money towards friendly charities – shows how incumbency creates an uneven playing field, and not some sort of competition that the best candidate necessarily wins.

In fact, Bloomberg’s vast wealth makes him particularly dangerous as a three term or more mayor. Rather than a temporary guard against financial crisis, a vastly wealthy mayor creates a long-term threat to democracy, because he can devote $30 million+ of his huge huge wealth to every election he runs, indefinitely. Even outside of the question of overriding *2* voter referendums, Bloomberg’s bid poses a threat to the (meager) democratic system in New York City