NYC's Mayor Bloomberg Denies Political Bid but Fuels Talk With Actions

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Mayor Denies Political Bid but Fuels Talk With Actions
By DIANE CARDWELL
Published: May 14, 2007


(Stephen Chernin/Associated Press)
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose agenda seems an increasingly national one, at a gala last week for Time’s 100 most influential people.

....So it goes with Mr. Bloomberg, who simultaneously rejects and stokes the idea that he might run for president, all the while sharpening his national profile and allowing behind-the-scenes machinations just in case he decides to make an independent bid for the White House.

Despite the denials — in Oklahoma City on Friday he said, “I have no presidential plans. I’m not running for president.” — Mr. Bloomberg, a multibillionaire unafraid to spend vast sums achieving his political goals, has increasingly fueled speculation that he will run, by doing things like retooling the Web site he used for his mayoral campaigns to promote his record in the public and private sectors.

And while aides say he has not been persuaded to mount a campaign, he has fashioned a second-term agenda for the city that is in many ways as national as it is local, focusing on broad issues like interstate gun trafficking, illegal immigration, energy and environmentally sound growth.

He has also crisscrossed the country in search of a national audience, traveling in recent weeks to Ohio, Texas and Oklahoma to deliver sweeping speeches on policy and politics.

“He’s clearly looking at the whole country,” said Ed Ott, executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council, who is a member of the mayor’s Sustainability Advisory Board and attended a private dinner where Mr. Bloomberg spoke broadly about governing throughout the nation. “These trips, they’re not just trips — this guy’s probing. I think he’s genuinely interested in, ‘If I do this, can I have an impact?’”

Though Mr. Bloomberg’s travels and speeches have fueled much speculation about his political intentions — he has been featured recently in Time and on the covers of The Weekly Standard and Fortune — it is far from clear how they will play out.

Mr. Bloomberg has said privately that he is not interested in a campaign simply to make a point or to be a Ross Perot-like spoiler. Like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, he would be in only to win.

For him to run — a determination he could wait on until early next year, after the major parties have selected their nominees — he would need to be convinced that the field was polarized enough to create an opening for his brand of moderate, pragmatic politics....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/us/politics/14bloomberg.html

[Captain Hilts]

1. He'd be a fool not to give it a world given the shallow crop the R's are offering.

He could easily finance an independent bid.