POLITICS
A Look Back at Bloomberg’s LGBTQ Record
HIV funding cuts, marriage ruling appeal, porn shop busts cut against De mocratic appeal
BY DUNCAN OSBORNE
Reached for comment
about Michael
Bloomberg seeking to
become the Democratic
nominee for president, Dan Tietz
fi rst let out an audible groan upon
hearing the former New York City
mayor’s name.
The news broke on November 7
that the billionaire was fi ling papers
in Alabama to participate in
the Democratic primary in that
state. Some published reports suggested
this meant he was entering
the race while others indicated
that Bloomberg, 77, had not made
a fi nal decision, but had to meet
a fi ling deadline to participate in
Alabama’s March 3 primary next
year. If social media commentary
is any indicator, the news was not
received well among LGBTQ folks
who are engaged in politics and
activism.
“The only difference between
him and Giuliani was he didn’t
stick a fi nger in your eye,” said Tietz,
who is currently the treasurer
of the Lambda Independent Democrats,
an LGBTQ political club in
Brooklyn. Tietz has a long history
in Democratic Party politics and
running or working in social services
agencies in New York City.
Bloomberg was the city’s mayor
from 2002 through the end of 2013
and he continued many of Giuliani’s
policies, though he was far
less likely than Giuliani, the mayor
from 1994 through 2001, to celebrate
or defend policies deemed objectionable
in some communities.
Bloomberg also used his billions
to effectively buy the silence of advocates
who previously criticized
Giuliani with large donations from
his foundation.
Like Giuliani, Bloomberg continued
to battle with the non-profi ts
that were serving people with HIV.
Bloomberg made cuts to the parts
of the city budget that served that
population. He also cut HIV prevention
dollars at a time when new
HIV infections were increasing
among young black and Latino gay
and bisexual men.
Michael Bloomberg meeting with Gay City News and its sister publications during his 2009 campaign
for a third term.
“There is a narrative about his
success, but there are many things
that didn’t go well for people who
needed help,” Tietz said.
Bloomberg was a Democrat for
many years, but ran for mayor
as a Republican. While he was
the leading fi nancial supporter of
Republicans in the State Senate,
mostly to prevent tax increases
on the wealthiest New Yorkers, he
generally presented himself as a
non-partisan technocrat who was
interested in balancing budgets
and effectively delivering services
to city taxpayers.
Bloomberg continued to use the
police to drive the homeless from
public view, a practice that Giuliani
ran on during his race for mayor
in 1993. The police practice of addressing
minor infractions, such
as stealing subway rides or drinking
in public, on the belief that
addressing those minor crimes
stopped more serious crimes began
under Giuliani, but exploded
under Bloomberg — for which he
is now apologizing. Police were required
to write a certain number of
summons every month. Stop and
frisk began under Giuliani. There
were just over 97,000 stops in
2002 and 685,724 stops in 2011.
In every year for which there is
GAY CITY NEWS FILE PHOTO
data, police mostly stopped young
African-American and Latino men
and well over 80 percent had committed
no crime.
Bloomberg also continued Giuliani’s
attacks on city porn shops,
but in 2008, undercover vice offi
cers began the practice of luring
gay and bisexual men into consensual
sex encounters in the shops
then offering to pay the men after
they agreed to the sex. The men
were then arrested for prostitution.
The shops were sued in nuisance
abatement lawsuits that cited the
arrests and the lawsuits were intended
to shut them down.
Police enticed older men with
younger offi cers, and of the 41 men
police known to have been arrested
for prostitution in six porn shops,
18 were Latino and 14 were African
American. Seven were white
and two were Asian. Altogether, 78
percent of the men arrested were
either Latino or African-American.
While 14 of the 41 had criminal records,
just two of the 41 had prior
arrests for prostitution.
After Gay City News began reporting
on these porn shop arrests,
criminal cases were dismissed and
some of the nuisance abatement
lawsuits were ended.
While Bloomberg earned his reputation
as an accomplished technocrat
by consistently producing city
budgets that had surpluses, what
is rarely noted was that he saved
billions of dollars in labor, benefi ts,
and pension costs by not negotiating
new contracts with the unions
that represented city employees.
The de Blasio administration has
since signed those contracts.
For years, Bloomberg refused to
take a position on same-sex marriage,
but after Doris Ling-Cohan,
a state judge, issued a 2005 opinion
ordering New York City clerks
to issue marriage licenses to samesex
couples, he endorsed marriage
even as he announced that the
city would appeal Ling-Cohan’s
ruling. She was overturned by an
appellate court in late 2005 and
the Court of Appeals, the state’s
highest court, upheld the appellate
court in 2006. It was fi ve years
later that gay and lesbian couples
won the right to marry in the State
Legislature.
Though Bloomberg became a vocal
supporter of the push for marriage
equality and raised signifi -
cant funds for it, the city’s Senate
Republicans whose campaigns he
funded told Gay City News he never
raised the issue with them — nor
did they come on board when the
measure fi nally passed in 2011.
Bloomberg could upend the
Democratic primaries. Currently,
at least two of the leading candidates,
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth
Warren, are embracing positions
like universal healthcare and
increasing taxes on the wealthiest
Americans. His supposedly more
moderate positions could appeal to
some voters, who are now widely
assumed to support former Vice
President Joe Biden and, in smaller
numbers, South Bend, Indiana,
Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
“With Trump in offi ce, our country
is starving for a progressive
Democrat,” said Allen Roskoff, the
president of the Jim Owles Liberal
Democratic Club. “Bloomberg has
shown that he has no center. He
has party-hopped and given obscene
amounts of money to Republicans.”
November 21 - November 27, 2 10 019 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com
