When we read the story on the cover of the Daily News yesterday touting a Mike Bloomberg aide Kevin Sheekey "strongest public comments yet from a member of the mayor's inner circle" urging him to run for the White House, we did a little double-take. Didn’t we spot equally beefy comments months and months ago… in the Daily News?
A quick tour of the databases confirmed, in fact, that some kind of re-gifting had taken place. News columnist Ben Smith detailed various Bloomy campaign scenarios, including his possible run as an independent, throughout the summer. And Smith was a New York Observer staffer in February when he first reported that Bloomberg’s cowlicked Richelieu was agitating for a White House bid.
So why the hype? Maybe the News was trying to keep pace with the New York Post, which recently launched a weird, little Mike-for-President movement.
Or maybe it was to give paper’s columnist Michael Goodwin, a longtime Rudy Giuliani defender whose wife worked for Giuliani, a chance to take a shot at Bloomberg in print today, letting Bloomy know the middle of the Republican party ain’t big enough for two divorced, gay-friendly, gun-hating, Yankee-loving, Democrat turncoats.
Glenn Thrush
Even if Bloomberg himself may have been coaxed into harboring Oval office dreams, a handful of Republicans and people in contact with the mayor's aides think the original motive for the Bloomberg presidential campaign had less to do with Bloomberg’s ambitions than his legacy.
By deflecting reporters’ sights to Washington, the Bloomberg team hopes to keep people from focusing too much attention on his lame-duck second term – a time when mayors like Ed Koch were humbled by scandal and de-fanged by their enemies, they say. "It’s a classic maneuver," said one insider.