Spin Cycle

The source: Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He's said so dozens of times over many years now. Really. Would he have been deceiving everyone? Here's a secret: You can skip all the stories about the city's monied elite deciding to cancel term limits -- unless and until they actually make a move and he actually turns out to have been, well, let's say, a dissember. So far this year he's one for one -- didn't run for president, as he said.

Now, completely without the knowledge of non-presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, the term-limited mayor of New York, his name has amazingly emerged on the ballot on the Green line in Virginia, according to this report. And it's attached to that of libertarian Republican Ron Paul. Now Bloomberg can either be a "spoiler" in a key state or have absolutely no impact at all. The odds are with number two, of course, by why stop typing Mike's name into presidential copy?....

UPDATE: Carey Campbell, head of the "Indy Greens" in that state, can move to withdraw Bloomberg's name if the mayor requests it. This is the response from Stu Loeser, the mayor's spokesman: "He hasn't made any decisions and hasn't had a chance to speak with Mr. Campbell yet. But this is a call for post-partisanship that Mayor Bloomberg hopes the major parties will hear." Well, that oughta clear things up nicely.

Dan Janison

The latest less-than-subtle mark of the increasingly-far-fetched keep-Bloomberg-relevant campaign -- brought to you by his highly-compensated spin butlers -- comes in today's New York Sun, where a story states "The city's leading champion of term limits is privately signaling a new openness to a third term for Mayor Bloomberg," which of course goes against the two-term-limit law that the mayor has repeatedly said should not be changed.

If indeed Ron Lauder, the cosmetics heir who financed the first successful term-limits referendum campaign back in 1993 -- and subsequent defenses of the law -- has even had a nanosecond's second thought, you would never know it from the firm public statements of Lauder's longtime spokesman Nelson Warfield. In the tenth paragraph of the Sun story he states:

"These un-named business leaders should leave impressions to comedians. They are totally off-base," Warfield wrote. "Mr. Lauder will defend the voters' choice of a two-term limit for city politicians as-is. And the in-depth polling we have done shows voters won't tolerate any tinkering with the law. Do these people really think voters want to reward the distinguished public servants who gave us the City Council slush fund scandal with more time in office?"

Sorry, the claim of "private signalling" makes no sense once Lauder's man has stated what he did so definitively. Similar stories elsewhere have already made Bloomberg the next president, the next New York governor, and the next vice-president. Hizzoner is many things, but he is none of those. And he is leaving office at the end of next year, and there will be an election -- no matter how uncomfortable it makes certain members of the municipal oligarchy.

Decades ago in New York, there were bigtime night-club owners who'd bring together celebrities for events that won faithful notice in the social columns of the newspapers. They'd promote celebrities by offering a stage and booking their acts. Last night, Mayor Michael Bloomberg used his capacity as the well-heeled mayor to turn Gracie Mansion into a political night club where he honored Sen. Hillary Clinton.

She responded in kind with show-biz humor -- teasing Bloomberg about his own political ambitions with an extended one liner that drew laughter from the everybody-who's-anybody audience. As this account records it, for example, she said:

“I was very touched by Mike’s concern for me over these last months, every since the campaign ended, and you know I was really moved that he wanted to talk about the campaign,” Clinton deadpanned. “What happened, how it happened, how you did it, what was the reaction that you got, what was effective and what wasn’t effective, you know, what worked in advertising and in direct mail, and I mean he was so interested in me that I was just transformed.”

Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford), a possible governor candidate who has never been one of his party's Clinton-o-phobes, was on hand along with Barbara Walters.

After an unrelated news conference in Brooklyn, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said from the outset that Monday night's soiree at Gracie Mansion for Sen. Hilary Clinton would be to welcome her back as a full-time senator -- not to raise money to pay down her enormous campaign debt.

"I did not plan to help Hilary Clinton with her campaign debt. She did not ask me," the mayor said. "I don't plan to do that." But he said Clinton deserves a proper welcome and to be recognized for her tenacity on the campaign trail and her work to help New Yorkers.

Bloomberg said, "Every time I ever called her she returns the call virtually instantly... I just thought it's a nice ways (sic) to welcome her back, cause you know she worked her heart and soul out in a presidential campaign, (it) didn't turn out the way she would've liked, and lots of people would've liked. But now she's back being a full-time senator and I thought its just a nice ways to say thank you to her."

The mayor's thanks won't be in a form of check: "... I have no intention of helping her or anybody else out with their campaign debt," Bloomberg said, adding that he was happy to pick up the tab on the party.

Besides, Bloomberg, who flirted with a 2008 presidential run, said he has his own debt to worry about.

"I spent a lot of money on campaigning," the multibillionaire quipped.

Michael Frazier

For the moment, the biggest Long Island names in statewide politics belong to Thomas DiNapoli, the Democratic state comptroller, and Dean Skelos, the Senate’s GOP majority leader. Fast-forward to the 2010 governor’s race, and at least five regional names pop out of the rumor mill, on the Republican side.

Speculation surrounds former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. But despite a weekend burst of publicity, here and here, about his fundraising and new real-estate dealings, even close allies doubt he’ll run following his high-debt presidential implosion. “Go to Albany and have to deal with (Assembly Speaker) Sheldon Silver?,” a longtime ally puzzled at a GOP event. “Why does he want to do that?”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg gets his name floated, but says when asked that he won’t run.

The Capitol newspaper in Albany notes that until four years ago, Barack Obama was just a state senator from Chicago — and set out to rate future prospects in New York’s upper house. Two names drew the highest marks from a team of political consultants: Eric Schneiderman (D-Manhattan) and John Flanagan (R-East Northport). “Possible governor material for 2014,” they say of Flanagan. The full evaluation is here.

Flanagan recently gained influence with appointment to the Legislature’s key review board for Metropolitan Transportation Authority projects. Some staffers, for better or worse, have been calling the six-foot-four Flanagan “mini-Dean.” No comment on the future from the Flanagan camp — where as in the rest of the Senate the instant concern is the GOP drive to retain control.

U.S. Rep. Peter King, who last year lost clout when Democrats took the House majority, has already suggested he could be in the mix for 2010. King owns creds as a loyal Republican: Last week, for example, he drew some conventional fire from longshot Democratic challenger Graham Long for backing President George W. Bush on offshore oil drilling.

Then there’s the talk that Suffolk Executive Steve Levy, with his flush campaign account, tight fiscal posture, and conservative props, could ditch the Democrats and run statewide as a Republican. Here is a fuller analysis by Rick Brand of Levy's political position..

Dan Janison

Joseph Mondello, the state and Nassau Republican chairman, was quoted in the Post today admitting that he is concerned that billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg could spend his way into power with the party’s county chairs.

“You can’t underestimate his money,” Mondello said. “If he was to drop $20,000 on every chairman, I might as well pack my bags and head to Florida. Let’s face it, money talks.”

Confirming Mondello’s message, Matt Walter, the state party’s executive director, told us that while Mondello has been personally cordial with Bloomberg, his role as state chair is “to fight for the party…if anyone from outside tries to exert undue influence.”

That makes sense – if indeed someone is trying to exert outside influence. At least one Bloomberg political aide who is on the city payroll at top salary has yet to respond to our inquiry. We'll let you know what the Great Maintainer is responding as soon as we hear it.

These party-rebellion scenarios involving Bloomberg – especially odd since he quit the GOP last year and registered without party affiliation -- appear to be as vaporous as the rumors he’d run for president, the rumors he’ll run for governor, and the rumors he’ll try to change the term-limits law and stay on as mayor. None have panned out.

Still, as one Republican insider noted, “With the mayor you never know. He loves to see his name in print. Obviously that was the case with the presidential candidacy..."

Dan Janison

After returning from the Tim Russert funeral in Washington D.C. this afternoon, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to address a gathering on the environment in Manhattan hosted by Chadbourne & Parke, LLP.

At that firm, former Gov. George Pataki, who once counted Bloomberg as a fellow Republican elected official, heads up the "Climate Change" team with his former top state aide John Cahill.

Hey -- maybe this can be milked for more heedless speculation about Bloomberg and the governorship, for which, he reiterated this week, he is NOT running -- regardless of the comic opera involving Gov. David Paterson's "private" statements blasting the lame-duck mayor.

Dan Janison

News items in recent days about a purported effort to unseat Joseph Mondello as state Republican leader seem shrouded, at best, by a political version of “Rashomon effect” in which recollections of the same matter differ by what a person is pre-disposed to believe.

Late last week, published reports -- all attributed to unidentified sources – had it that Tony Carbonetti, the right-hand man of former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, would make a move to become state chairman, and that current NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg met with departing upstate Congressman Tom Reynolds in a move to make him new party leader.

Parts of the puzzle were that Giuliani is in debt from his failed presidential effort, Bloomberg’s team was trying to keep him politically relevant and maybe prod him to run for governor, and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno recently hired a Giuliani man, Matthew Mahoney, to direct GOP state Senate campaigns.

But Giuliani and Carbonetti have assured Mondello that no such intrigue is afoot – and this denial actually sounds very plausible. Though Mondello and Giuliani weren’t exactly buds in the past, they did work closely last year when Mondello lined up the state organization to endorse Giuliani for president, a fact not lost on the ex-mayor. Giuliani had high praise for Mondello at the recent state GOP dinner.

For various reasons it also seems less than 50-50 that either former-Republican Bloomberg or more-than-ever-Republican Giuliani will run for governor in 2010 -- though of course you can never prove a negative, especially when someone's ambitions might change. Meanwhile, some Mondello-ites believe this is all mischief inspired by those around the chairman's old nemesis, the disappeared ex-Gov. George Pataki.

After the GOP dinner on May 29, Bruno was asked about the prospects of Rep. Peter King running for governor. Bruno, who has been a consistent backer of Mondello, said: ““We’ve got some great candidates in Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Rudy Giuliani, Peter King, you name it.”

The season of strange speculation begins. Stories so far were published here , here, here and here.

Dan Janison

New York City's deputy mayor for political promotion, Kevin Sheekey, must be at it again, holding the electoral football in place for the Charlie Browns of the mainstream media, the side trickle media and the blogosphere -- anyone with a news camera or a keyboard -- to try to kick.

In one piece, The Times lends the top of its Metro page to a story noting how despite pledging over and over and over again not to change term limits, his aides have been conducting polls about changing term limits which could allow Bloomberg to seek a third four-year hitch.

And after saying he has no interest in running for governor, it says Bloomberg might run for governor, for which the Daily News reports he got better results. Also today, the New York Sun weighs in with a story that has soon-to-be-ex-Rep. Tom Reynolds ready to replace Joe Mondello as state GOP boss with Bloomberg's backing. Full story is here.

Our GOP sources say this is nonsense. If believed, though, it would be another tenuous hint of a gubernatorial run which Bloomberg has said he is not making. Question: Anything happen recently in the city that may motivate the lame-duck administration to try to change the subject from something else? At any rate, dear reader, expect another round of "he-didn't-quite-rule-it-out" as the clock on what is legally his last term ticks down.

Now -- as before, during the presidential tease -- we note that Bloomberg starts out as a proven liar the minute he's running for either position.

Dan Janison

Eliot Spitzer, the former governor, got himself nicknamed "the steamroller" based on his own self-description to a legislator. But this heaviest of heavy political machinery was dismantled in March -- after it was discovered to have been doing some unauthorized road work.

Now we have Michael Bloomberg, who ends his mayoral run next year, maintaining that the use of the verb "maintained" to describe his assertions regarding contact with the late Sean Bell's family amounts to calling him a liar. (See previous posting).

What our city-and-suburb-slickers might not know is that the machinery known around these parts as a grader is also called a "maintainer" elsewhere in the country, according to our native Nebraskan staffer Erik German.

So given Hizzoner's wack public eruption over Michael Frazier's use of the word in a question, and our obligation to enlighten the reading public, we display a diagram of a steamroller, above, and a maintainer, below. That way we can tell our politicians, past and present, apart.

Bloomberg's new mechanical monicker, "the Maintainer," goes nicely with the fictional piece of machinery once played by his friend in California, Arnold Schwartzenegger, aka "the Terminator."

Sure, it might prove more edgy if he took to the airwaves with Michael Savage or Curtis Sliwa -- but you take whatever news you can get in drive-time or otherwise: Mayor Michael Bloomberg seems to be en route to returning to his Friday performances with John Gambling (left), as the Post reports.

Oh, good night nurse, here we go again. In New York City, another closed little circle of officially-denied but officially-fed speculation has been launched about Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who this time is allegedly trying to find a way around term limits to run for a third four-year hitch in 2009. Reports are here and here. This bears the M.O. of the Keep-Him-Relevant unit of municipal government, in the style of the recently-ended Mike-for-president speculation that of course came to naught.

You can see the advantage to Bloomberg. Without this stuff, the stories about the city's disturbing pattern of building accidents, the lack of urban housing, the faltering economy, and the prevailing idea that the Manhattan toll has been defeated on the merits -- just like the ill-considered West Side stadium -- might be all we hear about the administration.

The mayor's spokesman said Bloomberg will be out of office by the end of next year, but hey --how can you let it go at that when somebody else in a nearby office....

Dan Janison

As widely reported last week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan was ticketed for speeding and improperly using lights and sirens. She was en route to Albany to push for a Manhattan toll aimed at funding mass transit.

But we still don't know why she wasn't taking the train.

Dan Janison

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who got a call from Lt. Gov. David Paterson yesterday, told reporters that he spoke to Gov. Eliot Spitzer this morning.

“I told him my thoughts are with him, and wished him all the best, and said if he ever wanted my advice, I’d be happy to give it to him,” the mayor said to a huddle of reporters after an event at the New York Public Library.

Sources say that the mayor called Spitzer, and then the governor called Bloomberg back.

The mayor’s comment, although brief, was somewhat unusual because Bloomberg rarely speaks to impromptu media scrums. However, the mayor doesn’t have a full press availability scheduled today.

That should make tomorrow’s press availability – which may well come not only on the heels of Spitzer’s expected resignation, but also after the release of a new Quinnipiac poll about the mayor’s political future (2010 gubneratorial race anyone?) – pretty interesting.

-- Karla Schuster in City Hall

Politics is a steamroller sport -- just ask Eliot Spitzer -- so it's time to start looking at the upside of his (presumptive) downfall. At first blush, there seem to be a half dozen winners.

1. Michael Bloomberg. Sure, he's said he doesn't want to go north but he also claimed he didn't want to run for president ... Suddenly there's an open job that fits his ego, ambitions, a decade of sucking up to Joe Bruno and self-professed managerial genius. It also gives him the most valuable gift a lame-duck mayor can have: something to talk about other than snowstorms, the latest City Council scandal and water main breaks. He's out of office in January 2010. The gubernatorial campaign would begin a few months later -- leaving him weeks of quality time on the golf courses of Bermuda before writing himself the inevitable $200 million check.

2. Joe Bruno. So much for the purifying Democratic tidal wave that was going to sweep the dirty, corrupt GOP out of power in the State Senate.

3. David Paterson. Nice, upstanding guy who's being given the chance of a lifetime. Will he turn into an unbeatable incumbent -- or Malcolm Wilson II? Wilson succeeded Nelson Rockefeller in late 1973, less than a year in office before he had to run against Hugh Carey. Should Spitzer resign, Paterson will have two-and-a-half years to make his own reputation.

4. Chuck Schumer. Felt dissed when party elders told him to put aside his gubernatorial ambitions to clear the path for Spitzer. People close to Schumer say he's moved on and is now quite happy to be the man behind the Democratic throne in the U.S. Senate. But who knows? At the very least he's got one of the all-time great I-told-you-so's.

5. Hillary Clinton. It won't do her a bit of good now, but Spitzer's blundering insistence on pushing ahead with his immigrant driver's license plan saddled her with an awkward, unpopular position she has since ditched. From a payback perspective, she must be having a discreet chuckle.

6. Andrew Cuomo. Before the rise of Prince Eliot, he used to be the abrasive, hard-driving political son whom everybody detested. For the moment, he's earning high marks for humility and his pursuit of mortgage-disaster villains. It's clear he wouldn't mind taking back his dad’s old job. The downside: David Paterson's in the way.

-- Glenn Thrush

For the politician lucky enough to be its subject, presidential talk makes a great gig.

The chat comes cost-free, risk-free and bruise-free — a windfall of flattering attention that the could-be candidate gets to turn on and off.

Once it ends, though, a bill of sorts seems to come due.

Gov. Mario Cuomo had his friends stoking the presidential speculation until the day in 1992 he decided to opt out, leaving the plane to New Hampshire on the runway. In 1994, a relatively unknown legislator named George Pataki unseated him.

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg draws a spotlight from here on, it will shine on the hard realities of his day job — the crude bombing at Times Square, sagging tax revenues, immense housing costs, and the school system’s flaws.

For the billionaire Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Blank mayor, who must leave office next year anyway because of term limits, the tenor of the free publicity can only go downhill from here. The only question is how steep the slide will be.

Take the sexy issue of parking.

Seven years since its formation, the Bloomberg administration has revealed, as reported here by William Neuman and Al Baker in the Times....

Dan Janison

Just when you thought it was safe to call the mayor, well, Mr. Mayor, one of his key aides reveals that Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama gave Mike Bloomberg a ring yesterday.

Just, you know, to say hi.

Oh, and maybe to talk about being his vice-president.

Or maybe not.

Wink. Wink.

“Certainly you could joke that Obama’s call was a fundraising call yesterday,” Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey quipped on New York One’s Inside City Hall tonight. “The man (Bloomberg) has the ability to finance a campaign. I don’t think that’s why you choose a vice president.”

Sheekey spent months and a lot of the billionaire mayor’s money laying the groundwork for a possible presidential campaign. And since Bloomberg announced in an op-ed in the New York Times this week that he’s not going to run, Sheekey and former mayoral pollster Douglas Schoen have been trying to sell the vice-president scenario to anyone who will listen.

"I think it was a reasonably short call, you know, I was briefed,” Sheekey said the conversation between Obama and Bloomberg. “I was told they had a nice call and I spoke to the mayor after they had breakfast a few months ago.”

Karla Schuster

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a big proponent of environmental causes – right down to recycling some of the answers he served up during his long – and now finally ended – presidential flirtation.

Check out this exchange on the mayor’s radio show this morning:

Host John Gambling: "So vice-president? Would you be interested?"

Bloomberg: “Um, vice-president of my mother’s shul in Medford, Massachussets might be an attractive thing to focus on. Nobody’s going to ask me, John. I’ve got 671 days left to go in this job. I think being the mayor of New York City is one of the most exciting things you can do.”

Sound familiar? Yep, we thought so too. It’s the second time in as many days that Bloomberg has played coy when asked about the Veep spot. Not that we think Bloomberg is interested in being second banana on anybody’s ticket – in fact, months ago in a television interview, he definitively dismissed the idea.

But give the newly buzz-less billionaire mayor credit for coming up with a new strategy to boost his national profile faster than you can say: “I will not be a candidate for president.”

Former Bloomberg pollster Douglas Schoen appeared on New York One’s Inside City Hall last night, pushing the “he would make a great vice-president or treasury secretary” riff. Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey is scheduled to appear on the show tonight. One guess what he’s going to say.

Ah, just like old times….

Karla Schuster

It was the same in the beginning. Michael Bloomberg announced his mayoral run in 2001 in a television commercial and even refused to be interviewed by a New York City reporter who caught up with him the same day it was airing. Today, he uses the Op Ed page of the New York Times as his platform to say definitively that he won't run for president.

There's talk of his role in national affairs and national candidates. How about the day job? Political trajectories tend to decline after announcements like this one. Look at Gov. Mario Cuomo. Bloomberg still has two years left to do things like straighten out whichever bus schedules and budgets the school chancellor has most recently screwed up, find out why a shell company was doing the demolition at the Deutsche Bank building, explore some of the oddities of the building inspection process, like that....Not as sexy, filled with public-relations hazards. What will Deputy Mayor for Political Promotions Kevin Sheekey be doing?

Dan Janison

Even as the clock runs out on Mayor Bloomberg's presidential chances (the mayor himself said on Monday it was "getting close to being too late" for a third-party candidate to jump into the race), former Bloomberg pollster Doug Schoen (right) is keeping the White House fires burning.

The latest leap of logic came when Schoen told the New York Sun earlier this week that Ralph Nader's decision to run for president as a third-party candidate actually helps the mayor's chances because he will pull the Democratic field to the left just as presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain shifts to the right to satisfy GOP conservatives.

That, according to Schoen, leaves "a huge void in the middle" for someone like the mayor.
In other words, in the great tradition of Monty Python: "I'm not dead yet!..."

Next up: Doug Schoen's post-inauguration analysis of how the swearing-in of a new president leaves all kinds of room for a Bloomberg candidacy.

Karla Schuster

UPDATE: Turns out the spokesman from Arnold Schwartzenegger's office who stopped by Room 9 with Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey and Communications Director Stu Loeser isn't going to be the Governator's mouthpiece for long. Adam Mendelsohn is leaving as Ah-nold's communications director after this week, which he's spending on vacation in The Big Apple visiting friends, among them - that's right, you guessed it - Sheekey.

Mendelsohn's impending departure has been well-publicized on the West Coast, but not so much when he was introduced to the press in Room 9 earlier today.Still, Mendelsohn said there's nothing to read into the omission, or even into his visit. He and Sheekey got to know each other well because Mayor Bloomberg and Arnold have worked together a lot over the past year, Mendelsohn said, adding that he had never seen City Hall or the mayor's famous "bullpen" for his key staff.

"It was just a sight-seeing tour," he said.

PRIOR TO THE UPDATE: Just a few minutes ago, Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey and Communications Director Stu Loeser made a big show of stopping into Room 9 -- the New York City Hall press room -- with Adam Mendelsohn, a spokesman for California Gov. Arnold Schwarnegger, and introducing him around to the assembled media.

Sheekey pointed out reporters by name, except for the ones he doesn't know or doesn't care about, but had little else to offer by way of information. Mendelsohn was friendly enough, but didn't have any business cards or any explanation of why he was here, except to say that he was "just talking" during his visit to City Hall. Loeser, asked a few minutes later why Mendelsohn was here, simply said "he's in town."

Nothing like taunting the local press...

Karla Schuster

Rick Brand has a detailed piece on the efforts of the Independence Party's itinerant Frank MacKay, who's been all over this nation finding ballot spots for the prospective billionaire candidate....

Forget the presidential stuff for a second. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s uber-publicized visit with California Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger over the weekend prompts this question: Would Ah-nold ever drop his Republican affiliation, as Mike did, if only to become a non-partisan gubernator?

Dan Janison

On the left is Kevin Sheekey, Mayor Mike Bloomberg's deputy mayor for running stealth presidential campaigns, speaking with California Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger, who is foreign-born and therefore not constitutionally eligible to run as the non-candidate's non-vice-presidential candidate.

Sheekey and Schwartzenegger talked for several minutes after a news conference -- during which the governor said he and the mayor are "soulmates" but also insisted that he will not endorse any presidential candidate.

Newsday's Karla Schuster captured the special summit above in L.A. What should the caption be? (Clean and respectful -- please).

Not a single political position on anything at all is expressed in this political promotion for Bloomberg. Awesome! Let's elect him on the explicit condition that he never specify or even hint at anything he's going to do in office other than fight trans-fats. Watch this, and tell us what if anything you can infer about where the man stands:

Eight years ago this week, Mayor Rudy Giuliani delivered his seventh State of the-City address, marking the midpoint of his second and, by law, final term. It was laced with the usual self-congratulation, aimed in part at an audience beyond the five boroughs.

Yesterday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered his seventh State of the City address, marking the midpoint of his second and final term. It, too, was laced with the customary self-congratulation - and aimed a bit at an audience beyond the five boroughs.

When Giuliani, Bloomberg's possible rival, spoke in City Hall on Jan. 13, 2000, he'd started running for higher office - U.S. Senate - without having announced that he was doing so. And when Bloomberg spoke at the new ice rink in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park yesterday, he, too, had started running for higher office - the presidency - without saying so.

Ballot preparations and strategies and planning have moved far enough along now that for billionaire Bloomberg the only question is whether he pulls the plug in the coming weeks on his unorthodox stealth candidacy - or embraces it in full.

All this presidential fanfare, though, hides the sobering truth of his day job: Having two years left in office means a shrinkage of municipal power and the prospect of a government adrift.

With economic storm clouds looming, Bloomberg called yesterday for sacrifices by unions. But labor leaders in the room knew full well that Bloomberg now lacks leverage. He leaves in 2009 - and the latest round of contracts is already negotiated and signed.

Key parts of his broader agenda appear doomed as well. Nobody applauded, for example, when .....

Dan Janison

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was deposed in a South Carolina gun dealer’s lawsuit — and a lawyer for the plaintiff tried to question the billionaire about his presidential plans. Bloomberg's city lawyer objected, saying “if the question is a question... as of today, I don't believe that it's relevant.”

Sounds eerily like one of the mayor's press conferences. Anyway, Azi “Politicker” Paybarah has the piece here.

Dan Janison

Now the alliance involved in promoting a major third-party candidacy for president -- presumably Mike Bloomberg -- has come to include a Virginia political organization that's already floated some Mike-for-president petitions. For the release from the Independence Party, led by Long Islander Frank MacKay, click on the continued bar below.

In addition, there are reports of the Unity '08 people losing consultants to the stealth Bloomberg effort under way.

The world's longest media drumroll since the days of Gov. Mario Cuomo thus continues. Of course, this guy won't have to leave the plane on the runway if he decides to withdraw since he probably owns the plane and the runway. Or he'll fly it himself if the campaign goes public. Also, it strikes us that Florida's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, seems to have stopped predicting Bloomberg would not run....Team Rudy usually has the scoop on things that affect itself.

Ah, but don't you long for the good old days -- during what we could have called Unity '04?

In those days Rudy and Mike were together endorsing George W. Bush for re-election, and mere citizens were arrested by billionaire Bloomberg's underpaid and overpressured cops during the New York City GOP convention -- simply for walking down the street. It's true, good out-of-towners. Pedestrians were trapped in orange nets as if they were fish. And even with his minimalist endorsement of the incumbent -- he was running for reelection the following year -- the Democrat-turned-Republican mayor couldn't seem to squeeze out a position on the Iraq war. Maybe he will do so some time before his inauguration in DC, maybe not.

While we're at it, take a good close read of this Voice piece by Tom Robbins this week. It's a good, cold reality-check on what the run by the non-Huckabee Mike really entails.

Once again, it makes good sense here to employ the logic of Wonderland, since we're in it. Just assume Bloomberg is running and that his denials are outright lies until we see actual evidence that he is NOT going to be on the ballots. Colleagues who knew him in his (full-time) business days have said for years that the man likes to operate in secret until that is no longer possible. This itself could become a campaign issue in a democratic republic, of course. But the way it works is that he won't be called on his stealth operating style until he declares his candidacy to everybody, which ought to happen after he gets his strategy in order.

Dan Janison