The 2009 election for Mayor of New York City took place on Tuesday, November 3. Incumbent Michael Bloomberg, an independent who left the Republican Party in 2008, was reelected on the Republican and Independence Party/Jobs & Education lines with 50.7% of the vote, over the retiring City Comptroller, Bill Thompson, a Democrat (also endorsed by the Working Families Party), who won 46.3%. Thompson had won the Democratic primary election on September 15 with 71% of the vote, over City Councilman Tony Avella and Roland Rogers. This was the fifth straight mayoral victory by Republican nominees in New York, and the most recent to date, despite the city's strong Democratic lean in national and state elections.
Six other parties' candidates also contested the general election in November. Stephen Christopher of the Conservative Party of New York won 1.6% of the vote, more than the combined total of all the other minor candidates. The turnout of votersâÂÂfewer than 350,000 in September, and fewer than 1.2 million in NovemberâÂÂwas relatively low for recent mayoral elections, and Bloomberg won with fewer votes than any successful mayoral candidate had received since women joined the city's electorate in 1917. Democrats flipped back the borough of Brooklyn.
Before the election, the New York City Council voted to extend the city's term limits, permitting Bloomberg (previously elected in 2001 and 2005) and other second-term officeholders, such as Thompson, to run for a third term by way of Local Law 51 of 2008. Attempts to put this decision to a popular referendum, to reverse it in the federal courts, or to override it with state legislation were unsuccessful.
As of , this is the last mayoral election in which a candidate on the Republican ballot line carried Manhattan or Queens. It is also the last time that a candidate on the Republican line won more than 30 percent of the vote, and only the fifth time since 1969 (not counting Ed Koch winning his second term with the endorsement of both major parties in 1981).
New York City elected its Mayor by popular vote when Greater New York was formed in 1897, then in 1901, 1903, 1905, and every four years thereafter, as well as in the special elections of 1930 and 1950. Nineteen of the 31 mayoral elections held between 1897 and 2005 were won by the official candidate of the Democratic Party, eight by the Republican Party's nominee, and four by others. (The last official Democratic candidate to win the mayoralty was David Dinkins in the election of 1989; the last candidate to win the mayoralty without winning either the Republican or the Democratic primary was Mayor John V. Lindsay, running for re-election on the Liberal column in 1969.)
Michael Bloomberg, formerly a Democrat, was elected as a Republican in 2001 and 2005, succeeding another Republican mayor, Rudy Giuliani, elected in 1993 and 1997. Bloomberg left the Republican Party in 2008 and became a political independent. By a hotly contested vote of 29âÂÂ22 on October 23, 2008, the New York City Council extended the former two-term limit for Mayor, Council, and other elected city offices to three terms, allowing Bloomberg to pursue his announced intention to seek a third term in 2009. Legal challenges to the extension failed in federal court, and a proposed law in the New York State Legislature to override the extension was not passed.
Bloomberg's most prominent opponent was Bill Thompson, who could (similarly) have run for a third term as New York City Comptroller in 2009, but instead sought, and won, the Democratic nomination for mayor.
Though he had changed his party registration to unaffiliated, Bloomberg was unopposed for the Republican nomination in the party primary.
Thompson and Avella held their first televised debate on August 26 at the New York Public Library. They both directed more fire at Bloomberg than at each other. "After eight years of a Republican mayor who is focused on developers and the wealthy, I think New Yorkers are looking for change", Thompson said, while Avella declared that the "arrogance of billionaire Mike Bloomberg to think he's so important that he can overturn the term limits law, I think, is disgraceful." Another debate was held on September 9.
Out of the nearly 400 write-in votes, almost half or 184 (representing about one Democratic voter in 2,000) were some form or spelling of Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
In the final weeks of the campaign, Bloomberg was endorsed "enthusiastically" by the New York Times, whichâÂÂwhile calling Thompson a "worthy opponent"âÂÂpraised Bloomberg for handling city matters "astonishingly well". Most other local newspapers had preceded the Times in endorsing the mayor, but many did so tepidly, presaging the misgivings of The New Yorker. In a report filed days before the election, the magazine likened Bloomberg to Marcus Licinius Crassus: