New Yorkers vote for deja vu

The race to replace Rudolph Giuliani as New York's mayor is uncannily similar to the farce that produced President George Bush, writes Michael Ellison

Thousands of votes were counted twice; the loser is refusing to concede defeat; the race card is in play; and a law suit is threatened.

"We have to make sure that everybody here is comfortable with feeling that the person who gets the most votes wins the election," says Terry McAuliffe, head of the Democratic National Committee. Does any of this sound faintly familiar?

Unlike last year's presidential election, this concerns the smaller matter of selecting the man who will replace Rudy Giuliani as mayor of New York City. Still, this is a job that is described as coming second in importance only to that of president and it is hardly any less so now that the city must be rebuilt, at an estimated cost of $105bn (£73bn).

Mark Green, the city's public advocate and an inveterate seeker of public office, beat Fernando Ferrer, who wanted to become the first Hispanic mayor, by 10% for the right to become the Democrats' candidate in the election.

Or maybe it was 6%. There again, it could have been 2%. Maybe he did not win at all.

About 200,000 votes were counted twice; on the other hand it might have been 40,000. A good 800,000 Democrats turned out; unless it was 764,750; or something in the order of 570,000. The result, or at least another result, will be known soon.

New York's leading agent provocateur, the Reverend Al Sharpton, whose support helped Ferrer to win 71% of the black vote, is threatening to go to law. This is on the ground that Mr Green played the race card by campaigning along the lines that a vote for Ferrer was a vote for Sharpton.

The winner will face the billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the Republican who has financed his own campaign so far, in the election-proper on November 6. Except that there is talk now of a delay.

If this carries on it could become certifiably interesting. It was anything but right up to the date ordained for the Democrats and Republicans to chose their candidates - September 11, the day the World Trade Centre was attacked.

Voting was suspended after three hours and put back two weeks. Neither Green nor Ferrer won enough votes for victory, which was why the latest mathematically-challenged effort was required.

Giuliani enlivened the proceedings by saying first that he thought it best to step down at the end of his second term, as the law requires, despite the overwhelming marks he scored for his handling of the crisis.

Then he decided that perhaps the rules should be changed to allow him to run again; failing that, he would settle for staying in office an extra three months.

Now that neither of these things will happen, he has another idea: postpone the election for two weeks. He does not believe the elections board responsible for such matters can handle the job in the time allowed.

Technicians are working 12-hour days to ready the ancient balloting equipment, which looks as though it were fashioned from the rejected blueprint for a fearsomely complex fruit machine.

"They are being set too fast by men who have been working too long," says Joseph Gentili, deputy director of the elections board. "The machines are going to break down." It is not much remarked upon these days, but soon the rest of the country will remember that it doesn't care greatly for New York and it's brash, arrogant, unruly ways.

The next mayor will have to persuade Congress to cough up the billions it needs for regeneration and when it falls short, New York will need a formidable character to fight its corner.

If Giuliani were still in charge, he could get on Larry King's CNN show in a flash to present his case and shred his opponents. Somehow, it's difficult to see the televisual master of the tough look and the soft question being quite so accommodating to someone called Green or Ferrer.