Saint Rudy and his people don't need to bother. Sure, Roosevelt and Lincoln had to stand for re-election, but Rudy felt he needed to defy term limits and stay on unelected. This was ostensibly to keep up the morale of FDNY and NYPD, to whom he'd been denying contracts for years (At that point, NYPD, originally an ardent supporter, had already begun demonstrating against Giuliani).
Then there was the lawsuit demanding the right to bring his mistress into the home he shared with his wife and two young children, and then there was Bernard Kerik (and we don't seem to have heard the last of him).
Now here's Fred Brown, a Giuliani delegate who lives in a Battery Park high-rise, but votes and holds office in the Bronx. Brown claims it's OK because he owns property in the Bronx. Never mind that it's not actually located in the district he votes in--he's a Rudy supporter, so it's OK.
There's been a lot of chatter in the comments section about the double-zero contract that we took (during one of the biggest economic booms in NYC history). The UFT was the first to vote on this contract. The UFT President wrote a letter to rank-and-file stating anyone who thought we could do better must be "smoking something," and that we'd better get used to double zeros and a 25-year maximum. Nonetheless, rank-and-file rejected this contract.
Immediately thereafter, DC37 voted it up, and many municipal unions followed. A modified version of the contract was presented to the UFT, raising maximum to 22 rather than 25 years, and a demoralized UFT voted for it. As someone who reached maximum salary last year, I can tell you that the UFT Prez was wrong, and that we certainly benefited from our initial rejection.
But later, it was discovered that DC37 leaders had falsified their union election, the one that passed double-zeros and set the precedent for other municipal unions. Several DC37 leaders were relocated up the river to do a stretch. The fact that the municipal contracts were all based on blatant fraud did not trouble Saint Rudy at all. The contracts all stood.
What's the moral here? Morality must be strictly adhered to by working people, while important folks like Saint Rudy can do whatever they want, however they want, whenever they want.
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