The third term hasn't always been smooth sailing for Mayor Bloomberg, especially in the past two months, as the city has been rocked by a constant strangle of Blizzageddons, ice storms and thundersnows. Bloomberg has been given the brunt of the blame for the poor snow responses, and has taken to wearing his panic sweaters more and more. But the latest NY1/YNN-Marist Poll shows that the Mayor has reason to cheer up: 44 percent of NYC voters rated his job performance as either excellent or good, up from a low of 37 percent early last month. Those floodpants are really working out for him!
Albeit, he's still far below the 68 percent approval rating he got in October 2008, but according to Lee Miringoff of the Marist Polling Institute, a majority of voters think the city is headed in a positive direction, which reflects well on the Mayor: "Whether people think the city is heading in the right direction or wrong direction is a critical barometer of how they are going to assess the mayor." Maybe everyone is just as charmed by his recent New Yorker cover as he is.
It certainly seems that Gov. Cuomo is. Speaking to reporters about the recent tensions between himself and Bloomberg that have arisen since his dire budget proposal, Cuomo went out of his way to make sure everyone knows everything is copacetic between himself and the Mayor: "These are tough economic times...and I think it's more important probably than any time in recent political history for the mayor and governor to have a good working relationship. I'm a personal friend of the mayor's for many years. He's doing a good job, and I'm looking forward to working with him."
Cuomo even said he agreed with Bloomberg's assessment that teacher layoffs should be merit-based, and not grounded in the "last-in, first-out" system: "..the mayor's point is there should be a different decision-making process than just seniority. I think there is receptivity to the point that there should be objective, fair criteria that don't penalize seniority, but also understand that there are other criteria to take into consideration," Cuomo said.
