Backlash for Bloomberg over presidential buz

Backlash for Bloomberg
over presidential buz
BY KARLA SCHUSTER | karla.schuster@newsday.com
January 11, 2008

For months, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his aides have shown a deft touch managing the public relations around his non-presidential campaign, and recent polls show that most Gotham voters think the White House buzz is helping the city.

But with primary season in full swing and no clear leader in either party yet, there's also evidence that the strategy of simultaneously stoking and scoffing at presidential speculation may be generating some backlash.

The same polls that show city and state voters think Bloomberg would be a good president also show that they do not want him to run. City voters, a Quinnipiac University poll found, believe he has a "moral obligation" to finish his term, which ends in 2009.

Even the mayor himself appears frustrated by the attention at times. At a news conference last week about a drop in city smoking rates, he looked around the unusually packed room and quipped: "I'm glad to see there's so much interest in smoking."

But later, when he was asked why he was planning to attend a bipartisan summit in Oklahoma, he tersely replied: "Because I was invited. Next question."

Most recently, when he's asked about the presidential race or the primaries, Bloomberg often declines to comment, but then does just that, taking shots at what he calls candidates' lack of specific positions on issues such as health care, while offering few clues to his own.

The rising tension comes amid news that Bloomberg has been polling voters in all 50 states to gauge his viability as an independent candidate and that the Virginia Independent Greens are joining with the Independence Party of America to get Bloomberg on the state ballot.

"He's still in the catbird seat, but I don't see that lasting much longer," said Douglas Birdsell, a political science professor at Baruch College. "As the pressure to declare mounts, he's going to have less and less free rein. He risks negative coverage, and it's already begun."

Local newspapers have taken aim, one calling the mayor "a big tease." Yesterday, the New York Post wrote an editorial titled "Stop Toying, Mayor Mike."

Spokesman Stu Loeser said that Bloomberg has always been straight about his intentions.

"The mayor has said he's not a candidate, but he's going to speak out on national issues that affect New York," Loeser said. "All the feedback we get on the street or on the subway is that New Yorkers think this is good for the city and it is helping the mayor push the city's agenda."

One Republican operative and staunch Bloomberg supporter says the mayor has nothing to lose either way.

"What difference does it make if there is a backlash? He's mayor through 2009 no matter what," the operative said. "If he doesn't run, the worst that happens is people say, 'Oh, he led me on.' And if he does decide to run, he will do it with a media buy of unprecedented size and that will erase any equivocation that was expressed before."

Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey has said the mayor could wait until early March to declare. But after the Feb. 5 primaries, Birdsell said, he "could tip his hand more aggressively and say, 'I'm actively exploring this.' That could satisfy any drumbeat for an answer for awhile."