Mayor
Mike Bloomberg
addresses JCRC
dinner.
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JEWISH COMMUNITY RELATIONS COUNCIL
How Bloomberg, Koch
Paraded to City Hall
Story by Tim
Boxer
Photos by
Nina Boxer
 HIS
is how Mike Bloomberg decided to go for the gold at City
Hall. Last spring, he asked Ed Koch what it was like to be
mayor of New York.
“I’ll tell you this,” Koch said. “I
never did dinners.”
“What about parades?”
“I love parades,” Koch said. “I never
miss them.”
After Bloomberg did his first one, the Salute
to Israel Parade, he called back: “You’re right. It was great.
I’m going to run for mayor.”
Mayor Mike related the story at the 25th
anniversary dinner of the Jewish Community Relations Council at the
Plaza Hotel, where JCRC president introduced him as Mayor Mordechai.
And how did Koch become mayor? He said that in
1977 the editors of the New York Post interviewed the seven
candidates. Koch stood sixth in the polls.
A week later his phone rang.
“Is Congressman Koch home?”
“Who’s calling,” Koch asked.
“Rupert.”
“Rupert…Rupert…doesn’t sound Jewish to
me.”
Rupert Murdoch, Neil Cavuto and
Jessica Bibliowicz.
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Murdoch proceeded to inform the candidate that
the next day’s New York Post would endorse him on the front
page.
“Rupert,” Koch replied, “you just elected
me mayor of New York.”
What was extraordinary, Koch said, was that in
his 12 years in office, the media mogul never once asked for favors.
Along with Murdoch, JCRC honored Deputy Mayor Dennis
Walcott, former head of the New York Urban League, and Jessica
Bibliowicz, president of National Financial Partners and
daughter of Joan and Sanford Weill of Citicorp.
Murdoch told of the time he took a group of
editors from New York and London for a weekend at Ariel
Sharon’s ranch. Sharon took them on a bird’s-eye tour of
Israel aboard a helicopter gunship, flying over the Golan Heights,
West Bank and settlements.
“We saw the vulnerability of the country,”
Murdoch said.
“Not all New York newspapers feel the cause
of Israel is all the news that’s fit to print,” he added.
Gov. George Pataki praised the
publisher: “There is no newspaper in the U.S. more supportive of
Israel than the New York Post.”
He warned of a resurgence of world
anti-Semitism, as evidenced by the murder of Daniel Pearl,
and added, “We have to stand with the people and government of
Israel, and with JCRC for another hundred years. Yasher koach!”
[Hebrew: More power to you!]
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