DISGUSTED! ANOTHER 4 YEARS WITH BLOOMBERG! THIS LEPRECHAUN WITH A STICK UP HIS ASS!

The seven empty machines in the auditorium of Middle School 117X in the South Bronx said all you needed to know about this year's mayoral contest.
By 9 a.m., not a single voter could be spotted at any of them. Several machines had registered barely a dozen voters in three hours, and during the next half hour no one would walk in to cast a ballot.

"The low turnout is surprising," said Kathleen Larkins, one of the veteran election coordinators.

It was the same story from East New York in Brooklyn to Bushwick, to Washington Heights: poor voters, those most disaffected by the Bloomberg years, stayed away from the polls in droves.

His opponent Bill Thompson, despite a lackluster and poorly financed campaign, almost managed to pull off a stunning upset.

No doubt, many voters rebelled against the constant harangue of Bloomberg flyers and those nasty Bloomberg commercials and phone calls and just wanted them to end.

The mayor will still call this a democratic victory - final proof that New Yorkers endorse his naked power grab last year to overturn term limits.

He fools no one.

In the midst of the city's worst economic crisis in 60 years, Bloomberg spent money like a million drunken sailors to buy his job for the third time. Quite simply, he buried democracy under mountains of cash - because he could.

Mike Filippou, a former worker at the Stella D'Oro factory, was one those in the Bronx who voted for Thompson.

A Connecticut private equity firm shuttered Filippou's factory a few weeks ago. The closing followed a yearlong struggle between the plant's owner and its unionized workers. The owners wanted to drastically cut pay and benefits. When they couldn't succeed, they closed the plant and sold the brand to an Ohio company.

"Bloomberg never lifted a finger to save our jobs," Filippou said. "At least Thompson tried."

Governing during this third term will be far tougher than the mayor and his aides ever imagined.

Watch for key accomplishments Bloomberg has touted to blow up, much as happened during Ed Koch's third term.

The likeliest areas:

1) Computerization of government. Under Bloomberg, city agencies spent billions for new computer systems that haven't delivered what they promised and have exploded in cost - beginning with the new 911 system. Many of those contracts were awarded with little or no bidding. It's a scandal waiting to be unearthed.

2) Land development. Bloomberg's people spent years giving favored developers public spaces, city subsidies, and friendly zoning for huge megaprojects - many of which stalled in the economic slowdown. The price will now come due.

3) Education reform. The mayor's biggest claim has been improving the school system. But as more independent reviews come out of his reforms - from charter schools to improved test scores - proof mounts that much of the progress is smoke and mirrors. City test scores could prove to be as reliable as all those Triple A-rated subprime mortgages Bloomberg's Wall Street friends peddled.

So let Bloomberg version 3.0 begin. He sure paid enough to barely beat Bill Thompson.