Just after the organization's "Champions of Choice" lunch and awards ceremony honoring Marcelo Luis Ebrard Casaubón, Mayor of Mexico City, NARAL Pro-Choice New York endorsed Mayor Michael Bloomberg for a third term as mayor of New York City.
In endorsing Bloomberg, Kelli Conlin, President of NARAL Pro-Choice New York, cited the Mayor's signature on a bill that prevents anti-choice clinic protesters from preventing women from entering reproductive health care centers, his support of the organization's Urban Justice Initiative to share municipal-level public health strategies around reproductive health, and his mandate that medical residents in obstetrics and gynecology receive abortion training in New York City public hospitals.
In his remarks during the luncheon, Mayor Bloomberg said that he looked forward to federal funding for comprehensive sexuality education appearing in President Obama's 2010 budget and that New York City would move quickly to seek those funds.
The Bloomberg endorsement is in keeping with the advocacy group's policy of supporting pro-choice incumbents, spokeswoman Samantha Levine told Elizabeth Benjamin of New York Daily News [12]. Bloomberg's likely Democratic challenger, Comptroller Bill Thompson, had not yet asked NARAL Pro-Choice New York for an endorsement, Benjamin reports. Bloomberg's decision to run for third term is controversial in New York City; the City Council passed a bill lifting a two-term limit for elected officials [13] in the city at Bloomberg's urging just this past fall. At the time a poll found that 89 percent of New York voters wanted a referendum, not a council vote, to decide the issue.