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Mayor Bloomberg has wriggled free of every force that tried to block his bid for a third term, but he still hasn't heard from one body he can't sweet talk, bulldoze or buy off.
The Department of Justice's section for voting rights must decide by Tuesday whether the October term limits extension will hurt minority voters.
If it does, every two-term incumbent in the November elections would be suddenly ineligible - sending Bloomberg and a boatload of other politicians on a retirement cruise.
The city Law Department filed 1,789 pages with Justice to make sure that doesn't happen, saying that "term limits by definition affect all candidates and their constituencies in precisely the same manner" without any racial overtones.
Norman Siegel and Randy Mastro - lawyers on the other side of the issue - sent their own sheaf of paper to Justice pointing out what should be glaringly obvious to anyone who looks at the City Council: Without term limits, incumbents stay in their seats.
"Since 1993, no minority candidate has ever unseated a white incumbent for any municipal office in New York City," Mastro said. "It's a textbook case of a civil rights violation."
Granted, white challengers also have a hard time ousting white incumbents, which is why we have term limits in the first place. And Mastro has already lost a separate lawsuit to block the term limits law.
He may be on to something, though. Three of New York's representatives in Congress - Ed Towns and Gregory Meeks, who are black, and Nydia Velazquez, who is Hispanic - have written Justice to say the law is discriminatory.
The funny thing is nobody quite knows whether their political pressure will help or hurt.
Career lawyers in Justice's voting rights section mutinied when they felt pressured by the Bush administration to slant their decisions his way.
They now report to a Democratic President and an attorney general who believe Justice should still oversee changes that affect the Voting Rights Act.
Bloomberg, meanwhile, never showed President Obama much electoral love on the campaign trail - and he acknowledged last week that he hasn't spoken to the President since before the inauguration.
But Justice lawyers may also feel newly empowered to ignore political pressure from all sides, whether from a mayor with plenty of Washington tentacles or from Congress members who see minority voting rights being in peril.
"There's always political pressure, but historically, the Justice Department has fought that," said Joseph Rich, who headed Justice's voting rights section from 1999 to 2005. "It should make no difference. They should be looking at whether this third term hurts black voters."
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