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55 chapter two Electing the CEO Mayor Daniel Doctoroff’s leadership of nyc2012 represented the first time a member of the city’s ascendant tcc became directly engaged in the city’s governance. However, nyc2012 operated largely out of public view, and Doctoroff’s influence derived from his connections among the city’s elite. He did not, in other words, translate wealth, cultural power, and social ties into a popular following. In contrast, Michael Bloomberg’s mayoral campaign represented a public claim to leadership of the city by the tcc and the broader postindustrial elite of which it was a part. Candidate Bloomberg brought tcc aspirations to leadership into the open by arguing that his private-sector experience made him uniquely qualified to guide the city at a time of crisis and instability. He did so by centering his campaign on the idea that, if elected, he would be a “ceo mayor.” The election of a ceo mayor, as well as the broader corporate approach to urban governance constituted by the Bloomberg Way, was made possible by the local practices, processes, and conceptions that emerged during the post–fiscal crisis neoliberalization of New York City. These local factors created conditions in which an innovative form of neoliberal urban governance might seem attractive to many New Yorkers. However, also crucial was a specific culturalpolitical formation that emerged on a national scale in the last three decades of the twentieth century: the figure of the charismatic ceo. The articulation of such local and national factors created the necessary conditions for the election of the ceo mayor and the emergence of the Bloomberg Way. However, it was ultimately a series of unforeseeable events during Bloomberg’s 2001 campaign that led to his unlikely election as the city’s 108th mayor. This chapter describes how the neoliberalization of New York City, the figure of the charismatic ceo, and political contingencies came together to propel Michael Bloomberg into city hall.1 the charismatic ceo “By the time of the ’90s boom, ceos became superheroes, accorded celebrity treatment and followed with . . . slavish scrutiny,” business journalist James 56 • chapter two Surowiecki has written (2002). In contrast with “the professional Organization Man who toiled in anonymity during the era of managerialism capitalism” (Khurana 2002, 71), Bill Gates, Ted Turner, Jack Welch, Steve Jobs, L. Dennis Kozlowski, and the granddaddy of all these celebrity ceos, Lee Iacocca, are household names. Their ability to turn around struggling companies, to create shareholder value, and, in some cases, to even change the course of history while still relating to common people have made them grist for the mill of both the business press and the mainstream media. The veneration of hypersuccessful business tycoons has a long history in the United States—witness the celebration of Gilded Age figures like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller—and this most recent bout of businessman-worship has drawn on long-standing strains in American culture. Nevertheless, the figure of the charismatic ceo has its own unique characteristics reflecting the particular historical-geographical context in which it has emerged: the development of neoliberalism in the United States during the last three decades of the twentieth century, which brought with it class inequalities and new forms of corporate governance. A key spark of neoliberalism in the United States was a decline in corporate profits and upper-class wealth in the late 1960s (Goode and Maskovsky 2001; Harvey 2005). These developments generated a powerful, organized backlash from American business that aimed to reverse such trends and construct institutional, legal, governmental, and cultural arrangements more to its liking. The efforts to roll back government regulations, unionization, and labor costs at the heart of the neoliberal project were accompanied by two important developments crucial to the rise of the figure of the charismatic ceo: the internal restructuring of corporate governance and the rehabilitation of the public image of business. While the latter is the focus of this chapter, the former is worthy of brief mention to demonstrate that the rise of the figure of the charismatic ceo has not been merely a cynical effort by a unified business elite to manipulate the masses. This cultural development signifies a real shift in the way American capitalism functions, entailing a transformation of intracorporate class politics as ceos have sought to increase and defend their compensation and power. ceo self-regard and identity has also been transformed, as members and aspirants to the highest ranks of corporate power have sought to justify their...

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