New York is incapable of hiring a mayor who doesn’t suck ass. That’s just what they do. It’s like asking why Louisiana or New Jersey elects corrupt politicians. It’s just a way of life.

Jokes aside, though, crime was way higher back in the 90’s and he was a prosecutor who was “tough on crime” even though he was friendly with the Russian mob. The police union (which is unusually political in NYC) was behind him. No one knew that one day, he would beclown himself every day for the rest of his natural life

Better than as a presidential candidate and now Trump acolyte.

He got credit for navigating the city post-9/11. Which, ok, I think just about any semi-talented politician with a PR team would come out of that wrapped in a patriotic halo effect.

He discouraged going after undocumented immigrant students in schools, but pushed broken window policing tactics that disproportionally affected the same undocumented immigrants and people of color.

He seemed ok with protections and benefits for domestic partnerships (this was before gay marriage was legal) but also pushed for a school voucher system that would build up private and religious schools that were very clear and open about discriminating against LGBT people.

He was undoubtedly corrupt. But no more corrupt than any predecessor. So mixed bag compared to his peers and bad compared to the sort of politician I wish could be elected in a place like NYC.

When was Times Square rejuvenated? Was it during his watch?

I had read at some point after WW2 Times Sqaure slipped into seedy and run down with building owners on the brink of bankruptcy before efforts were made to reclaim the area from the places that were not desirable.

I wonder if he had any role in that?

He was elected as part of a white grievance reaction to having a black mayor.

He fought the Italian mob because he was in the pocket of the Russian mob.

He shut down a lot of clubs and nightlife in NYC, basically ruined the underground scene there and left “clubs” to be bottle service for rich assholes.

He’s a fucking fascist piece of shit and he deserves to lose everything.

My understanding – and I’m not a New Yorker – was that he has been often credited with reducing crime in NYC. Part of that was, as I recall, by cracking down on minor crimes, things like aggressive panhandling, with the idea that that was kind of a gateway drug to more-severe crime.

I don’t know whether that approach or him in particular was responsible for it, or whether it was other phenomena at the time – my gut is that changes like that usually aren’t just driven by one person – but my understanding was that crime did considerably fall off around the time, and crime was something that a lot of New Yorkers had been really upset about.