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Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg forged his historic re-election victory on Tuesday by drawing roughly half of New York's black voters and about 3 in 10 Latinos to the Republican line, even though he faced a Hispanic challenger who sought to capitalize on ethnic pride, an analysis of voting returns shows.
he mayor's wide support among minority voters is a sign that the strategy of the Democrat, Fernando Ferrer, to build on a dependable base of black and Hispanic votes fell victim to emerging political realities: that blacks and Hispanics no longer vote reflexively as a bloc, and that a middle-class coalition can trump traditional ethnic-based appeals. The winning multiethnic coalition turned out to be Mr. Bloomberg's.
He won a second term by wooing liberal defectors from Democratic ranks and by carrying every Assembly district in which white Catholics or Jews predominate. He also carried the only district in which Asians outnumber others.
What was most striking was the depth of his support among blacks and Hispanics, whom he aggressively courted in running against the city's first major-party mayoral nominee of Hispanic heritage. Mr. Bloomberg actually won several districts where Hispanics constitute the largest group among the population or the electorate, including the 34th in Queens, which includes parts of Corona, and the 80th District around Pelham Parkway in the Bronx. He also won about half of the mostly black districts.
Maybe the days of Koch and Dinkins and Gulianni are really gone- where there seemed to be this ever present if uderstated to the point of being deniably unstated appeal to race. The Bob Grants and Nation of Islam types got it though, and you could hear the salivating whenever one of these types was on the air. Disgusting.
If times are better that's very cool.
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