Last month’s primary election set the stage for the general election on Nov. 8, when the Republican incumbent, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, faces off against the Democratic challenger, Fernando Ferrer.

All the candidates endorsed by Local 237 won on Primary Day, except for Democratic mayoral hopeful City Council Speaker Gifford Miller.

Ferrer did not immediately win the 40 percent votes required by state law to avoid a runoff with Anthony Weiner, who came in second. A runoff could have cost the city more than $10 million. But in a show of Democratic Party unity one day after Primary Day, Weiner conceded. Nevertheless, the Board of Elections continued counting thousands of absentee and paper ballots, to determine officially, on Sept. 19, that Ferrer had received 40.15 percent of the total 478,789 Democratic votes to Weiner’s unchanged 29 percent, avoiding a runoff.

In the remaining weeks before the election, Local 237 members and working families citywide must closely evaluate each candidate’s track record and vision for the city’s future. Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman, gained popularity for guiding New York City through an economic recovery in the four years following the World Trade Center disaster, for reducing crime, and for staking his reputation on making improvements to public school education.

Ferrer, a former Bronx Borough President, who helped build the borough up from its infamous reputation as “Fort Apache,” wants to build a city that works for “all New Yorkers,” he says, not just “a private playground where only the wealthiest can afford it.”