NEW YORK (AP) -- Media mogul Michael Bloomberg spent $92.60 per vote to become New York's next mayor, eclipsing the U.S. record for self-financed campaigns and following a trend in recent high-stakes campaigns.
Documents filed Monday with the Board of Elections showed Bloomberg spent $68,968,185 in the race to succeed Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
"It's an astronomical number," said Rachel Leon, executive director of the public interest group Common Cause, which tracks campaign spending. "It breaks all previous records that we know of."
To put the Bloomberg expenditures into perspective, Texas billionaire Ross Perot spent $62 million on his failed bid for president in 1992 -- about the same figure spent by Wall Street multimillionaire Jon Corzine, who won a Senate seat in New Jersey last year.
In the five weeks leading up to Election Day, Bloomberg spent $28 million -- double the $14 million spent by his Democratic rival, Public Advocate Mark Green, during the entire campaign.
The old spending record for a campaign in New York state was set last year, when Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican Rick Lazio spent a combined $69.3 million in their U.S. Senate race. Bloomberg and Green together spent an estimated $83 million.
Bloomberg, the owner of a financial information company that bears his name, paid for the campaign entirely with his own money. He declined to take part in the city's campaign finance system, which would have provided him public funds with strict spending limits.
Bloomberg had no immediate comment Monday, but in the past he has made no apologies for his spending.
"If somebody wants to go out and take their own money to try to make the world a better place, I can only tell you my hat is off to them," he said during the campaign.
Giuliani, whose endorsement of Bloomberg is credited with helping the billionaire win the election, was barred by the city's term limit law from running for a third consecutive term. Bloomberg takes office Jan. 1.
In the final five weeks of the campaign, Bloomberg paid media consultants Squier, Knapp and Dunn more than $9.1 million on television and radio ads, paid pollsters Penn, Schoen and Berland about $8 million and spent $9.6 million on mailings.
Details of Green's campaign filings were to be available Tuesday.
Wealthy businessmen entering political races has been a growing trend in recent years. Perot spent large amounts of his fortune in seeking the presidency. Steve Forbes did the same. Corzine, Bloomberg and Virginia Gov.-elect Mark Warner are three recent examples.
Critics contend wealthy candidates fuel the campaign money race, create cynicism among the young and make it difficult for less affluent candidates to win races
