Bloomberg's stance on marriage equality this week should have been an early sign that he wasn't too worried about getting on the local GOP's good side. The deal he has seemed to have worked out gets him on a party line and reflects the image he tries to present, that of "independence."
From The NY Times:
Now that a few years have past, the second tier party is ready to make nice, and take gobs of money from the wealthiest man about town. A win would also give them pull as a party in New York City to say the least, especially if they are the only ones to give Bloomberg a ballot line. This is definitely a good thing for the mayor, so that he at least gets his name closer to the left side of the ballot. While Thompson is running a campaign for all New Yorkers, now at least Bloomberg can claim something too, "independence" to do as he pleases. Not that he wouldn't do that to begin with.Two founding members of the party, in an interview on Thursday at their town house in the West Village, said they would back Mr. Bloomberg’s bid to become the party’s mayoral nominee and expected their members to do the same in a coming vote.
“I think he’s got it,” said Fred Newman, a party leader. “And I think he deserves it.”
The nomination would amount to a political coup for the mayor, who had so infuriated party members last year that they threatened to deny him their ballot line in retaliation.
In an audacious move, the mayor and his top political aides had backed a bid last year by the state Independence Party chairman, Frank MacKay — a strong Bloomberg ally — to oust the party’s leadership in New York City, a gambit that failed, and quickly backfired on the Bloomberg administration.
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