Mayor Bloomberg never wanted this fight/never wanted to pick a side
BY ERIN EINHORN NY Daily News/local
Mayor Bloomberg never wanted this fight - and never wanted to pick a side.
James Keivom/News
Protestors march down Broadway from Zuccotti Park to "clean up" other parts of the city. Owners of Zuccotti Park announced Friday they postponed the cleanup, but that didn't stop Occupy Wall Street protesters from coming into conflict with the NYPD.
Politically and financially he couldn't afford a messy public showdown with hundreds of arrests.
And, personally, he was somewhere in the middle.
The billionaire business mogul is one of Wall Street's staunchest defenders and his advisers say he was becoming increasingly worried the protesters' message could seriously harm one of the city's most important industries.
But Bloomberg has cast himself in his third term as a warrior for civil liberties, lobbying aggressively to legalize gay marriage and leading the fight last summer for the rights of a property owner to put a mosque in a building a few blocks from Ground Zero.
He didn't want to go down in history as the guy who sent baton-wielding cops into a peaceful crowd, arresting hundreds of people while TV and video cameras rolled.
"It was a mess no matter what he did," said one mayoral confidant. "I think Ray Kelly and the Police Department are smart enough not to walk into the trap of being a bunch of heavy-handed thugs, but they understand that the world is watching."
The cost associated with arresting so many, processing them through the courts - not to mention potential lawsuits - would have been monumental.
The damage to Bloomberg's image would have been catastrophic, especially after he hustled to pull off a pitch-perfect response to Hurricane Irene two months back after butchering the day-after-Christmas blizzard.
The mayor insists the decision to hold off on a Zuccotti Park crackdown yesterday was not his to make. The decision came from the property owner, Brookfield Properties. But no one in the mayor's circle was sad to see the battle averted.
"It was purely a wise move," said Kathy Wylde, who heads the Partnership for New York City, a business coalition. "They avoided a confrontation, they avoided violence ...[The protesters] were mobilizing to create a scene that was potentially dangerous and disruptive."
That doesn't mean the city and Brookfield won't try to clear the park eventually - just don't expect them to announce the time and date beforehand.
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