For months, a key player in the Bloomberg-speculation effort has been Patrick Brennan, who oversaw political and field operations for the mayor’s 2005 re-election campaign and who has worked outside the state on union efforts in at least one national campaign, city sources said.
Brennan, with extensive labor contacts, works with Kevin Sheekey (below), now a deputy mayor in the administration, on quietly setting up bases of support. With extensive private funding, test-polling of a Bloomberg candidacy has begun in some parts of the country, according to well-informed sources. Brennan did not respond to a phone message from Newsday last week.
Unlike Sheekey, Brennan is no longer on the city payroll. He is a consultant in the Parkside Group, a city-based firm whose other partners have extensive Queens Democratic and union connections.
Dan Janison
Separately, as publicized before, state Independence Party leader Frank MacKay from Long Island has been working to drum up a 50-state effort to set up the means of ballot access for a major third-party presidential candidacy – for a contender still to be selected. He has made it known that he’d like Bloomberg to run.
As to the latest escalation in Bloomberg talk, MacKay said: “I cannot speak for the mayor and I take him at his word. When he decides to make his intentions clear, it will come out.” But he added his own observation: “For someone who is not running for president, he’s doing a very good imitation of a candidate.”
Comments (3)
MacKay has no relevance in the discussion about Bloomberg. Has anyone from the IP ever been mentioned by anyone really connected with Bloomberg as having any part of this? Does anyone really think that Bloomberg is relying on someone who when on tour to drum up support for his little IP this fall in the family SUV?
In addition to fighting with lunatics within his own party and asking Lindsey Lohan to run for office, MacKay's only hope to be anything other than the misogynist leader of a crackpot third party is that the Mayor throws him a bone.
Get your own house in order, Frankie, you are a silly little man.
cant be more wrong. mackay is the master politician and one of the five best in the entire state. mackay was one of the people that made bloomberg, without the Indy line when mike bloomberg ran for mayor, he LOSES.
bloomberg needs a platform to run on and frank is providing it
Sheekey and Brennan have been magnificent in the past lets see what happens?????