February 26, 2004
Henry J. Stern

I want to call your attention to an insightful article in the New Yorker — yes, the New Yorker — by Elizabeth Kolbert about Mayor Bloomberg. She explores why, with the mayor widely regarded as an honest, intelligent and fiscally responsible public official, so many New Yorkers say they will not support him for re-election.
 
Your thoughts on this question are particularly welcome. Perhaps you can make suggestions that, if adopted, would help the mayor with the human problem: "How to win friends and influence people." We know that it is harder to make friends if you have to raise people's taxes in order to maintain their services, and if you try to save them from killing themselves and their waiters by smoking indoors. It is trying when people who want your job denounce you, and propose schemes which sound appealing but which are unaffordable or illegal to implement. It is difficult when one or more of your 300,000 employees, including police officers and ferry captains, blunder tragically and adults or children die as a result of their errors. It is a problem when the ravenous state government imposes burdens on you but does not pay for them.
 
On the other hand, you wanted the job and it does bring you a measure of attention and satisfaction. Now you want to keep it, and to do that, you have to satisfy at least a plurality of the voters. Your friends can help you do that, if you listen to them. It is also possible that you need more friends.

One unexpected result of your affluence is that you don't owe anything to thousands of people because you did not need, or accept, their money. But people enjoy the sense that more important people are obligated to them; it gives them a stake in the enterprise. You have to find a way to give New Yorkers a sense of involvement in your efforts, even if they are not contributors to, employed by, or dependent on, City Hall. That is the challenge before you.