NEW YORK -- New Yorkers cast votes on Tuesday in a tight mayoral race between Democrat Mark Green and Republican Michael Bloomberg to decide who will succeed popular incumbent Rudolph Giuliani and lead a city whose economy and spirit have been wounded by the Sept. 11 attacks.
The battle to replace Giuliani, widely credited for his handling of the crisis, is between Green, 56, a political veteran, and Bloomberg, 59, a billionaire media mogul who has never before run for public office. The race turned bitter and unexpectedly close in its final days.
The election for leader of the nation's largest city was overshadowed for weeks by the hijacked plane attacks on the World Trade Center, the anthrax outbreak, and Giuliani's leadership.
Giuliani, who cannot stand for a third term but has endorsed Bloomberg, has calmed public fears of further attacks, lobbied the federal government for money to rebuild the city's financial district and made appearances at memorials and funerals for some of the thousands of victims of Sept. 11.
Hoping to win last-minute votes before polls opened at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, Green and Bloomberg ran around-the-clock tours of the city and flooded TV and radio stations with commercials. Voting booths will remain open until 9 p.m..
Naomi Bernstein, spokeswoman for the city Board of Elections, said voter turnout so far was "brisk" in a race that many analysts and politicians have said is one of the most crucial mayoral contests in the city's history.
"That's not to say its going to be a heavy turnout," she added. "But people are voting." A large turnout is seen as likely favoring Democrat Green.
Green led Bloomberg by double digits in surveys just two weeks ago. But that lead evaporated, leaving the race too close to call in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 5-to-1.
Bloomberg, founder of financial news and information services company Bloomberg LP, has spent some $50 million of his own money running for mayor, more than anyone in city history. Green has raised and spent $15 million.
After casting his ballot at a public school on Manhattan's Upper East Side on Tuesday, Bloomberg said the biggest issues facing New York over the next four years would be security and the economic downturn.
"I think that my experience in terms of building a company and managing people through economic trying times and providing leadership to 8,000 employees and a few hundred thousand customers makes me qualified to lead this city forward for this period of time," he said.
Bloomberg has said Green lacks the business acumen to lead New York's recovery while accusing his opponent of indifference to Latinos, a key voting bloc. Since winning the endorsement of Giuliani late last month, Bloomberg's commercials have prominently featured the two-term mayor saying the candidate has "exactly the qualities you need right now for mayor."
For his part, Green has summoned help for his campaign from Democratic powerhouses such as former President Bill Clinton and the Kennedy family, while publicly accusing his rival of insensitivity toward women and blacks.
Green, who also voted on Manhattan's Upper East Side, claimed on Tuesday that his media mogul rival is too inexperienced in public service to run New York City.
"I just hope that everybody turns out to vote because the stakes are so high, the race is so close, and the contrast is so sharp between a Democratic advocate who's been in every neighborhood and helped families in every neighborhood and a Republican billionaire who is out of touch with our neighborhoods, who hasn't one accomplishment in public life and whose slogan is 'Money Talks'."
Whoever wins Tuesday's contest must fill the shoes of Giuliani, who has served as mayor for eight years and was only the third Republican elected in the last century.
While juggling the perennial issues of education, housing and crime, the new mayor also must negotiate with many federal and state officials, government agencies, business and voter constituencies in directing the rebuilding effort, restoring confidence and shoring up the budget.
