Mayor Bloomberg looked to set a record for margin of victory in his appeal for a third term earlier this month. That didn't happen. But the mayor did succeed in setting a new record for spending in a municipal campaign, burning through $102 million of his own cash to barely eke out a win over Comptroller William Thompson.
The Bloomberg campaign spent about $20 million per percentage point in his 5-point margin of victory -- a far cry from 2005 when he spent $85 million to crush Democratic rival Freddie Ferrer by 20 points -- a record for a Republican in New York City. According to The New York Times' number-crunching, Bloomberg spent about $183 per vote.
The mayor's camp released the campaign finance data at 3:30 pm on the Friday after Thanksgiving -- a time that should go a long way to ensuring that the big spending on paltry results gets buried in the news.
In his pursuit of a third term, the mayor also cemented himself as the single biggest spender in U.S. history in self-financed campaign for public office.
The mayor has a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine to be $17.5 billion. He did not take donations and was allowed by law to spend whatever he wants as long as he files expense reports.Bloomberg broke his own records of $85.1 million in 2005 and $74 million in 2001.
And the mayor's final tally has not even been reached yet as he is yet to hand out six-figure bonuses to his campaign staff. That additional spending will not be reported until after the mayor's inauguration.
