Bloomberg Comes To Howard Beach

It is so true that politics make for strange bedfellows and whoever was your enemy yesterday could very well be your friend tomorrow. However, it doesn’t mean that we can’t have fun dissecting the interesting burgeoning liaisons, laugh at the hypocrisy and be tickled pink by the political theater.

Attending Eric Ulbitch’s inauguration, it is obvious that Mayor Bloomberg does not feel threatened by golf pro Tom Ognibene and has forgotten that it was Tom’s hand up Ulrich’s anal cavity in the 32nd Council Special Election. In the upcoming general election, the mayor needs friends in the outer boroughs and looks like he is willing to walk in the gutter and rub elbows with the slobs to curry favor.

At the end of the day, Iron Mike Bloomberg will be Mayor (thankfully) for a third term and the Queens Republican Party will still be in shambles.
As Reported by the Daily Politics…

Standing "O" For Bloomberg In Queens, Ragusa Unmoved

March 15, 2009
Mayor Bloomberg continued his courtship of the Republican party with his appearance this afternoon at the Howard Beach swearing-in ceremony of one of the city’s newest - and youngest ever - councilmembers, 24 year-old Eric Ulrich, the DN's Erin Einhorn reports.

Though Ulrich was elected in a non-partisan special election, his swearing-in drew Republican players like Queens GOP Chairman Phil Ragusa (one of the more strident of the holdouts in giving Bloomberg Row B) and Sen. Marty Golden (a big Bloomberg booster whose chairman, Brooklyn's Craig Eaton, abandoned his fellow chairs and backed the mayor).

Bloomberg doesn’t often attend swearing-in ceremonies held in outer boroughs, but these are different times for the Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent mayor who is trying to land the GOP line for his re-election bid.

Not to put too fine a point on it: “He’s here to score points,” Ragusa said.

Ragusa said the Queens GOP has not yet decided who to back in the mayor's race.
“We’re going through the process,” he said. “We have to screen some more candidates. We had a good screenings on Friday. We screened Tom Ognibene and a few for controller and public advocate and they presented themselves very well, and we’ve got to screen John Catsimatidis.”
(In the interest of full disclosure: Ragusa's executive director of the Queens GOP, Vince Tabone, works for Catsimatidis' Red Apple Group).

Bloomberg might be having trouble convincing Ragusa, but there was no lack of love for the mayor among the several hundred people who came out to Ulrich’s ceremony in the auditorium of a local public school.

Tom Lynch, president of the Rockaway Republicans, came with three large signs supporting Bloomberg that he propped on chairs at the back of the room.

Bloomberg was greeted with cheers when he walked into the auditorium and with an unanimous standing ovation when he was introduced on the stage by former schools chancellor and current St. Francis College Chancellor Frank Macchiarola (who taught Ulrich at St. Francis).
Bloomberg used his platform to suggest that party matters little in government.

"We are going to work together in this city," he said. "While sometimes you read about all of the difference between one party and another, at a city level, everybody works together."

"There are Republicans, Conservatives, Democrats, Liberals, Working Family Parties, Communist Party for all I know. From every party in the world. They live in this city. They work in this city. Some of them work for this city but one thing is for sure: They do work together. And that's what makes this city the greatest place in the world."