Micah Blaichman

There is an old adage about Democratic primary candidates: they are like a firing squad, except they stand in a circle.

This was never truer than during the 2001 New York mayoral election. When a Unity Dinner was held on Nov. 2 for candidate Mark Green, all the big-wig Democratic players were there: former President Clinton, his wife Senator Clinton, and Senator Schumer hosted the event; former candidates Alan Hevesi and Peter Vallone dutifully attended; even Jon Stewart showed up as master of ceremonies. There were two significant absences however: former candidate Fernando Ferrer and Bronx Democratic leader Roberto Ramirez.

Ferrer, the former Bronx Borough President, had won the first primary but was forced into a runoff with Green because he received less than 40% of the vote. Green eventually won the runoff after a bitter campaign tinged with racial divisiveness. Ferrer's camp charged that the Green campaign had participated in the production of racially demeaning cartoons and automated telephone calls featuring Ferrer and the Rev. Al Sharpton, a Ferrer supporter and controversial New York political figure.

After an internal investigation, Green acknowledged that some of his supporters attended a Brooklyn meeting where these tactics were discussed, but fiercely denied knowing of or approving them. Ferrer endorsed Green, but later publicly pushed him to fire those supporters. When Green refused, Ferrer voiced his frustration and ensured that the Bronx Democratic organization was absent on Election Day, a move that was crucial in Green's defeat to underdog Republican billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

Events seemed to be heading along the same course in this year's Democratic primary contest: it looked like Ferrer would be forced into a runoff with Anthony Weiner, a white, Jewish congressman from Queens, after coming in just a hair under 40 percent. Weiner had given a fiery speech on primary night and was seen campaigning the next day. But in a matter of hours, Weiner had dropped out of the race and endorsed Ferrer, calling for party unity to defeat Bloomberg in November. A week later, Weiner and Ferrer, along with former candidates C. Virginia Fields, the Manhattan Borough President, and Gifford Miller, the City Council Speaker, stood in front of City Hall at a Democratic Unity rally supporting Ferrer's campaign. A week later, Mark Green campaigned with Ferrer on the Upper West Side.

What happened? As the returns came in on primary night and Weiner gave his “victory” speech, it seemed certain that the Democrats were headed for another destructive runoff that would hand the election to the increasingly popular Republican mayor.

Undoubtedly the Democrats learned a lesson from 2001. All four candidates knew that the only chance they had to defeat Bloomberg was to keep the party unified and all pledged to back the eventual nominee. Nobody wanted a repeat of the Green-Ferrer runoff, which had showcased a racial divide that has been brewing since Herman Badillo challenged Abe Beame in the 1973 Democratic primary. Since then, white upper- and middle-class liberals in Manhattan have become increasingly uncomfortable with what they see as the corruption of political machines that represent African-American and Latino voters in the outer boroughs — for example former Brooklyn Democratic Party chairman Clarence Norman, who was forced to step down after being indicted on bribery and extortion charges.

On the other hand, African-Americans and Latinos feel scorned by a party that asks for their votes but refuses to nominate their leaders. Before the 2001 runoff, this divide was showcased in 1989, when David Dinkins successfully challenged Ed Koch in the Democratic primary, and in 1997, when Rev. Sharpton unsuccessfully challenged Ruth Messinger. Weiner may have thought he could win the primary, but not without further straining racial tensions and fracturing the party, and thus handing Bloomberg a second term.

This year with Bloomberg's poll numbers painting a bleak picture for any Democratic candidate, winning the nomination may not have been Weiner's campaign goal. From the start of his campaign, Weiner was pegged as an unserious candidate, running only to build name recognition for the future. If this is true, Weiner would not want to be remembered as the Democrat who was crushed by a Republican in one of the nation's most liberal cities, not to mention as a participant in a racially divisive runoff. Weiner's safest best was to concede gracefully — not to Ferrer, per se, but to party unity, and thus set himself up as the man to beat in 2009.

In fact, up until the end of the primary campaign when Weiner began to pick up steam, Ferrer was considered the only serious candidate. There was a perception that this was his year and that he “earned” the nomination, much the same way that in 2001 Mark Green had“earned” the nomination after spending eight years as public advocate battling the Giuliani Administration, the second highest position in city government.

Many Ferrer supporters believe that the 2001 election was stolen from them because of the Green campaign's “dirty tricks,” making the Ferrer-Bloomberg match-up this year the election that should have been. In addition, with the election of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in Los Angeles, many felt it was time for New York Democrats to embrace the nation's fastest growing minority group.

In this way, Ferrer's candidacy was important for its symbolism: if he had been elected, he would have been the first Puerto Rican mayor of New York. Further, his nomination in an election that many Democrats considered to be unwinnable from the beginning was supposed to help secure Latino support for the Democratic Party and heal the racial divide.

Once his nomination was secure, Ferrer found himself on the wrong side of a predicted electoral landslide. His campaign strategy became clear quickly: link Bloomberg with President Bush and the National Republican Party as much as possible. Although at first this may have seemed preposterous, as Bloomberg is considered a Republican in name only, and is far to the ideological left of the President, the issue is not trivial: Bloomberg is one of the GOP's largest donors and was the impetus for the Republican's New York Convention, which set the stage for Bush's 9/11-themed campaign. However the issue never caught on, high approval ratings, a monstrous campaign war-chest, and endorsements from the New York Times and the New York Post ensured Bloomberg's victory.

The one bright spot for Democrats in this year's election may be the hope that in the future they can avoid the messy primaries that have highlighted the Party's struggle to hold together its diverse set of interest groups, both here in New York and around the country. The Republicans' greatest asset over the past thirty years has been their ability to keep together the coalition of economic libertarians and social conservatives while reaching out to swing voters. After the failed Harriet Miers nomination and the Iraq debacle, that coalition may have begun to crack, which just might be the Democrats' chance to become relevant once again in national politics by creating their own party unity.