It now appears as if the public, the media and the political establishment are being prepared for an announcement that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will launch an independent run for President.
Yesterday we ran THIS POST which noted Bloomberg’s upcoming meeting with Unity 08, a high-powered bipartisan group that is on the brink of finding a candidate to back — and to buck two parties increasingly mired in partisanship, polarization and seemingly lacking a desire to truly aggregate national political interests.
That’s ONE media leak type story.
And now here’s ANOTHER via the New York Times — which means the word is being slowly eased out. Some of it repeats what we had in our other post. But here’s the key info that this writer has now heard verbally from two other analysts as well:
Next week’s meeting, reported on Sunday in The Washington Post, comes as the mayor’s advisers have been quietly canvassing potential campaign consultants about their availability in the coming months.
And Mr. Bloomberg himself has become more candid in conversations with friends and associates about his interest in running, according to participants in those conversations. Despite public denials, the mayor has privately suggested several scenarios in which he might be a viable candidate: for instance, if the opposing major party candidates are poles apart, like Mike Huckabee, a Republican, versus Barack Obama or John Edwards as the Democratic nominee.
A final decision by Mr. Bloomberg about whether to run is unlikely before February. Still, he and his closest advisers are positioning themselves so that if the mayor declares his candidacy, a turnkey campaign infrastructure will virtually be in place.
Bloomberg aides have studied the process for launching independent campaigns, which formally begins March 5, when third-party candidates can begin circulating nominating petitions in Texas. If Democrats and Republicans have settled on their presumptive nominees at that point, Mr. Bloomberg will have to decide whether he believes those candidates are vulnerable to a challenge from a pragmatic, progressive centrist, which is how he would promote himself.
Some other details we have read about or were told about privately are in here as well:
Mr. Bloomberg, who has tried to seize a national platform on gun control, the environment and other issues, has been regularly briefed in recent months on foreign policy by, among others, Henry A. Kissinger, his friend and the former secretary of state, and Nancy Soderberg, an ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration.
These aren’t usually the kinds of briefings municipal mayors seek (unless they write weblogs).
Advisers have said Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire many times over, might invest as much as $1 billion of his own fortune (he spent about $160 million on his two mayoral races) on a presidential campaign.
But they warned that while they were confident of getting on the ballot in every state, the process was complicated and fraught with legal challenges, and that Mr. Bloomberg would begin with an organizational disadvantage, competing against rivals who have been campaigning full time for years.
Another tidbit in the Times piece that echoes what has been written and said before is that Bloomberg does NOT want to be seen as “a rich Ralph Nader” — someone who is in the race but doesn’t really have a chance to win, although he could influence the debates and take votes away from someone else as a “spoiler.”
One person close to the mayor, who requested anonymity so as not to be seen discussing internal strategy, stressed that Mr. Bloomberg would run only if he believed he could win.
“He’s not going to do it to influence the debate,” the person said.
Meanwhile, former Republican Presidential candidate Steve Forbes fully expects Bloomberg to run. USA Today’s On Politics blog:
“I think it would be highly unlikely that he wouldn’t run,” former Republican presidential candidate and media magnate Steve Forbes said today of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Forbes, who’s supporting the presidential bid of Republican (and former New York mayor) Rudy Giuliani, said on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer that he’s convinced that Bloomberg will mount an independent run for the White House.
“I’ve thought, for a long time, he’s itching to do it,” Forbes said, according to a transcript sent to us by CNN. “He may have blown hot and cold on it, short-term. But he’s itching to do it. And so he can wait. He’s got the resources to wait until after February 5th, see who the two party nominees are.
“But unless something extraordinary happens, I expect him in the race.”
And who knows?
The American political process — if you include the way campaigns are run, negative campaigning, the tone of talk radio and some aspects of the blogosphere — may have disgusted enough people so that a candidate who doesn’t have the same predictable reactions, whose utterances don’t elicited the all-knowing smug wink and nod from those TV analyst talking heads and isn’t out of a politico cookie-cutter could have REAL appeal.
It looked like it could happen for Ross Perot in 1992, until he withdrew and jabbered about Republican operatives planning to disrupt his daughter’s wedding. By the time time Perot got in again, he had irretrievably lost Big Mo.
If Bloomberg does get in, many Americans open to a new option will be holding their breath — hoping he doesn’t have an engaged daughter.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.