By Jeremy Cerone

On Tuesday November 3, New York City will pick its new mayor.

The two candidates are incumbent Mayor Mike Bloomberg, running as an independent, although formerly a Republican, and Comptroller Bill Thompson, representing both the Democratic and Working Families parties.

Billionaire Bloomberg became eligible to run again when the City Council removed mayoral term limits last October. He has spent upwards of $36 million of his own money on his campaign, out of $17.5 billion in personal wealth.

Thompson’s campaign has spent around $4 million.

Bloomberg has been endorsed by numerous people and groups, including Matt Damon, the National Abortion Rights Action League, and at least 43 newspapers, including the Jerusalem Post.

Thompson’s far shorter list of endorsements includes Broadway Democrats and Assemblyman Pete Rivera. He has been striving, thus far unsuccessfully, to gain support from President Barack Obama, who has focused much more energy on deterring Gov. David Patterson from running for reelection next year.

Bloomberg currently enjoys a substantial lead of about 20 percentage points in the polls. Most of the clash between the two major candidates is over who is more responsible for the problems of the public school system.

But to this observer, many of their views seem fairly similar, and much of the opposition to Bloomberg seems based on how he ignored the will of the people, who voted down a referendum on the subject twice, and got the City Council to pass the law changing term limits.

The winner will serve from January 1, 2010 until December 31, 2013.