Fri Nov 22
Mayor Bloomberg's approval rating is drying up faster than the city's cash flow, a new poll found yesterday.
Twice as many voters disapprove of his job performance now as did in July.
Overall, the poll found 41% of voters like the job he is doing as mayor, while 46% give him a thumbs-down.
That's double the 23% of voters who rated Bloomberg negatively in July - and the first time his popularity has dipped below the halfway mark since he reached City Hall in January.
"The honeymoon is over," declared Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "After a big welcome, Mayor Bloomberg rates only a standoff in job approval."
It's not hard to pinpoint why: The mayor's bid to raise property taxes 25% to help close a yawning budget gap is getting bad reviews from voters - who favor spending cuts by a 2-to-1 majority.
Tough economic times almost always mean tough poll numbers for chief executives, and Bloomberg is no exception.
In addition to raising taxes, he has proposed cutting $1.8 billion in city services over the next 20 months, a hit list that includes closing firehouses, shutting 32 senior centers and trimming 2,000 cops from the NYPD.
But only 34% of voters approve of his handling of the city's budget.
That's a bleak number for the former media mogul, who campaigned on the pledge that his business know-how would help to restore the city to fiscal health.
Bloomberg, whose popularity had been slowly waning from a peak of 65% in February, tried to shrug off the precipitous drop in his numbers yesterday.
"You cannot run the city to try to improve your position in polls," he told reporters in the Bronx. "Nobody should expect, when you are facing very tough times and have to make the hard decisions, that the public ... will say, 'Hey, great!'"
"I think, to some extent," Bloomberg added, "those are referendums on 'I don't want my taxes raised.'"
Little comfort
Asked whether he felt unappreciated, given the always tough task of cutting the city's budget, the mayor quipped, "After raising my two daughters, nothing could make me feel unappreciated."
But the survey offered Bloomberg little solace.
Although 60% of voters agree with him that the city's fiscal plight is "very serious," only 44% said they were "very" or "somewhat" satisfied with the direction the city is headed - the lowest level since Quinnipiac began asking that question in November 1996.
Bloomberg's popularity, while traditionally strong across ethnic groups, has waned considerably among blacks and Hispanics.
Only 46% said they'd be willing to pay more income taxes if the state approved his long-shot plan to tax commuters, compared with 47% who said they would not.
Even on improving city schools, which Bloomberg has cast as his priority, voters split 40%-to-41% on his handling of the job.
The Quinnipiac University poll surveyed 1,004 registered city voters over the last week. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
"This is a reflection of reality," Carroll said of the survey. "And the reality is he has big budget problems." Originally published on November 22, 2002
Small wonder, New York is back where it was 10 years ago, business moving out, unemployment increased sharply, taxes up........ whats to like about this guy.