Today the NY Daily News endorsed NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg for a third term. The following is their editorial: 

New York is far better off for having had Michael Bloomberg as mayor and will be far better off for granting him a third term in City Hall.

By every significant measure – from plummeting crime and rising school achievement to more and better parks and cleaner streets – Bloomberg has led the city decisively in the right direction over the last eight years.

His ban on smoking in public places helped to lengthen the average New Yorker’s life expectancy to a record level.

His drive to build housing added 100,000 affordable residences across the five boroughs.

His smart fiscal stewardship enabled the city to weather a historic economic slump while protecting vital services.

His fairness and low-key style set a tone that promoted racial and ethnic harmony.

His management talent delivered that rarest of things, a virtually scandal-free government.

And Bloomberg shows no evidence of flagging.

To the contrary, he shows every sign of holding to a vision that the New York of tomorrow must improve on the New York of today – and that the way to get there is by fashioning programs pegged to measurable results rather than to politics.

This, most certainly, is not the time for change at the top.

It is the time to call for more of the dynamism that made the streets safer than they have been in 40 years while improving police-community relations, even as the Finest ranks were thinned, even as Commissioner Ray Kelly molded the NYPD into a globally recognized counterterrorism force.

It is the time to call for more of the dynamism that took on the long, hard fight to banish a culture of failure from the nation’s largest school system – and has made substantial gains in this most crucial of wars.

Bloomberg pledged to be the education mayor, and skirmishing over his policies has been intense. While dramatically boosting school spending, he overcame opposition to take control, raise standards, boost principals’ authority and demand teacher accountability.

The benefits have begun to show – big time.

Fully 82% of the children in third through eighth grades passed this year’s math exam, with the success rate for fourth graders rising from 52% in 2002 to 85% in 2009, and for eighth graders from 30% to 71%. Those same kids upped passing rates on reading tests by 20 percentage points. And the high school graduation rate has climbed by 21%.

Only sustained mayoral attention can produce and build on improvements such as those, whether in the schools or in any other area of city endeavor. That inescapable fact weakens rival Bill Thompson’s claim to City Hall.

Give Thompson credit for the courage of his convictions. After two terms as controller, he alone among the prominent Democrats had the backbone to take on an incumbent with a strong record and the deepest pockets around.

Thompson has sought to tap the vein of public discontent over Bloomberg’s successful push to extend term limits. He has also given voice, constructively, to New Yorkers’ real frustrations with living in a city where everything seems to go up but paychecks.

Some of his critiques of Bloomberg have been on target. Losing command of the Buildings Department comes to mind, for example. Elsewhere, Thompson advocates worrisome approaches, as in his call to deemphasize standardized testing in measuring student progress.

Overall, although blessed with considerable strengths as a public servant in his own right, Thompson has a distinct disadvantage in trying for New York’s biggest job at this time: He is arguing against the incumbent’s remarkable history of success.

As for term limits, Bloomberg was right, in our estimation, because the extension has given November’s voters greater choice. Had he bowed out, the winner of the Democratic primary would be coasting to victory as the public’s sole option.

A third Bloomberg term – his last by any stretch of the imagination – would challenge the mayor to reach even higher, most importantly in the long-range work of transforming the schools.

And, freed of electoral considerations, Bloomberg could swing for the fences without regard to political fallout. The rule would have to be: all pragmatism, all the time. No calculations of the sort that won labor peace through outsize raises.

Finally, New York is beset by unprecedented economic ills that will force the next occupant of City Hall to do more with far less. Who would you trust to get that mountain of a job done?

Bottom line: Stick with what’s worked. Stick with Bloomberg.

(Source: NY Daily News)