Take The City And Run

The New York Observer’s Niall Stanage explores speculation, based largely on recent public statements by the Mayor, that Bloomberg may be considering an independent run at the Presidency in 2008. The reasoning seems to be that the Mayor wouldn’t be making statements on hot national issues if he didn’t have plans for higher office. Or perhaps the hint of such will allow him to avoid lame duck status for a while longer. This definitely seems like a long shot, but here’s an excerpt:

If there were any lingering doubts that Mr. Bloomberg is a RINO—a Republican in Name Only—his latest pronouncements have erased them. “I think it’s clear he’s not running in the Republican [Presidential] primaries in ’08,” Doug Muzzio, a political-science professor at Baruch College, says with a laugh.

Speculation has taken hold that the Mayor might consider wagering around $500 million of his multibillion-dollar fortune on an independent run for the White House.

Such a move may sound quixotic, but—or so the Bloomberg boosters argue—it would seem immeasurably less so if the Republican and Democratic parties each nominated a Presidential candidate from their ideologically entrenched flanks.