News Analysis: What Do New Yorkers Want?

EDWARD I. KOCH won his first term as mayor of New York in 1977 with a wordy but common-sensical war cry that caricatured his two immediate predecessors: "After eight years of charisma and four years of the clubhouse," his campaign slogan suggested, "why not try competence?" Mr. Koch projected a largely nonideological no-nonsense approach, which is what the voters wanted and, as it turned out, what they largely got.

For all the illusion that politics is irrational blood sport, arguably every New York mayoral election over the last century was won by a candidate who offered a clear alternative to his predecessor. The candidacies — at least in retrospect — seemed to provide voters with a logical rationale. Not all of them fulfilled their promise, but what they appeared to offer as candidates meshed most with New Yorkers' perception of what they wanted that year in a mayor, whether it was a cheerleader in chief or a soothing provider of balm.

What's especially striking about the congested 2013 elbow-to-elbow mayoral field is that with so many candidates and with the primary less than two months away, polls suggest that voters seem uncertain even about which qualities they want in the next mayor, much less which candidate can deliver.

Historically, the template for choosing a new mayor resembles a pendulum, swinging from one extreme to another in a palpable pattern. A cycle of reform and restoration dates from early in the 20th century. In 1925, the roguish James J. Walker defeated the hapless John F. Hylan and ushered in the excesses of the Roaring '20s — not the least of which was Mr. Walker's flamboyantly part-time mayoralty (which prompted him to issue a famous challenge to New Yorkers: "Imagine what you'd have to pay me if I worked full time.")

Mr. Walker was forced to resign and was followed, after a caretaker government, by Fiorello H. La Guardia, who hitched his star to the New Deal and was widely regarded as New York's greatest mayor. In 1961, Robert F. Wagner ran for re-election against his own record and the political bosses who had rebuffed him to herald a new era marked by progressivism and political inroads by organized labor.

In 1965, the charismatic John V. Lindsay was elected to save the city from entropy. His tenure would become so marred by social conflict and by soaring labor and welfare costs ("When we ask Sir Lancelot to feed the horses and do the washing," one aide recalled, "the armor tends to tarnish") that by 1973 Abraham D. Beame won because he was bland and "knew the buck" — not well enough, it turned out, to avoid a brush with municipal bankruptcy.

Four years later, Mr. Koch promised competence, and his campaign logic won him the race. Mr. Koch's 12 years of in-your-face competence and sometimes tone-deafness to black New Yorkers delivered the city next to David N. Dinkins, its first black mayor, in 1989. His seeming languorousness — he maintained that a mayor didn't "have to be loud to be strong" — subsequently elevated Rudolph W. Giuliani, who (loudly and conclusively) demonstrated that the city was, after all, governable.

But New Yorkers bridled at police-state tactics and pined for a return to democratic rule in 2001 — until the World Trade Center attack demanded an extraordinary gamble on Michael R. Bloomberg, the Republican self-made billionaire businessman beholden to no one except his own ego and bold initiatives.

The 9/11 terror attack delayed the Democratic primary, unsettling Mark Green, who was the front-runner, and weeks later elevated Mr. Bloomberg to the mayoralty of a decidedly Democratic city. Democratic voters outnumber Republicans 6-to-1; and yet, beginning in 1993, New Yorkers have failed to anoint a Democrat in five consecutive mayoral elections, which is another reason a Democrat is favored this time.

"Some years the theme is stronger than others," said Chris McNickle, the author of "To Be Mayor of New York." "Bossism in 1961; change in 1965; restoring calm in 1973; fiscal sanity and law and order in 1977 following the blackout; racial harmony in 1989; controlling crime and restoring order to a city out of control in 1993."

Twelve years after Mr. Bloomberg was first elected, New York seems a little like France did a year ago, weary of the flamboyance of Nicolas Sarkozy and longing for a return to "normalcy" after a whirlwind two decades of Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Bloomberg. As a criterion in choosing a mayor of New York, normalcy can be extremely subjective.

However the campaign unfolds this time, it will play into the public perception of each candidate's peculiar narrative: among them, Christine C. Quinn's grit (tempered by her tender embrace of Mr. Bloomberg's third term and political agenda); Bill de Blasio's populism; William C. Thompson Jr.'s maturity (amid increasing contentiousness among the candidates, and fiscal uncertainty, he may come across as the most grown-up); Anthony Weiner's appeal as an outsider and his rugged, even untethered, individualism; John C. Liu's espousal of unabashed liberalism; and, if he wins the Republican nomination, Joseph J. Lhota's managerial credentials.

What New Yorkers want after 12 years of a Bloomberg administration that posited itself as apolitical is clearly someone else — though someone who will not return the city to the "bad old days" before Mr. Giuliani; also, as a New York Times and Siena College poll suggested last week, someone who is more warm and fuzzy and can move the city in some vague new direction.

"So what is the theme for 2013?" Mr. McNickle asked. "Maintaining the status quo while doing a few things better seems to be the prevailing mood — a less compelling theme than in some years, so harder to call."