Henry Stern , Parks Commissioner under both the Koch and Guiliani administrations, has a blog of his own and regularly shares his insights on the latest political developments.
Here's Stern's take on Michael Bloomberg and why the Mayor hasn't announced his candidacy for the presidency ... just yet.
Media Faults Mayor For His Uncertainty On Presidential Run
By Henry J. Stern
January 14, 2008The weekend brought a torrent of news stories and columns to the effect that the public was tired of Mayor Bloomberg's flirtation with a presidential candidacy and that he should make up his mind now as to whether he will run.
This came after months of reporters asking him, wherever he went, whether he would run for President, followed by his consistent denial of any such aspiration. At the same time his capable Deputy Mayor, Kevin Sheekey, was telling people that the mayor was preparing for a race.
The true answer to that question lies is somewhere between the mayor's and deputy mayor's statements. Bloomberg may run, but has not yet made that decision. The principal reason he has not yet made up his mind should be obvious to everyone. One does not launch a third-party candidacy (and spend a billion dollars) until one knows who the major parties' nominees will be. That will not be known before Super Tuesday (February 5), and possibly not even then, if the states split closely between Clinton and Obama. The Republicans have just as many primaries as the Democrats on that day, and there are five candidates left there, McCain, Romney, Huckabee, Giuliani and Thompson.
A third party candidate faces obstacles getting on the ballot in all fifty states. Some states have higher barriers than others. Some day it will become an issue whether, in Federal elections such as President, Vice President, Senators and Members of Congress, the states can construct unreasonably strict barriers to candidates who are not from the major parties. New York's rules are of intermediate difficulty; an independent candidate must secure 15,000 valid signatures, with at least 100 from each of a majority of the Congressional districts in the state. So if one has 100,000 supporters in 10 counties, one does not make the ballot. Many other states have even more rigorous requirements for ballot access.
It is the press that has helped to build the Bloomberg boomlet: He travels around the country, speaking on issues, to try to make himself a national figure so that he will have some recognition before he decides whether to run. Then comes the major media buy, if he goes.
DIGRESSION: I clearly remember the first time I saw the name "Bloomberg." I was driving on the Major Deegan Expressway where it crosses the South Bronx at 134th Street. I looked out the window at a billboard, and it said, in large black letters in Helvetica type, upper/lower case, simply "Bloomberg." I wondered, who is this man who puts his name on a billboard? Especially, a name like Bloomberg, definitely not a Mayflower arrival.
Looking more closely, I saw in the small print that the sign mentioned a radio station, which Bloomberg happened to own. Its call letters were WBBR (Rule 10 - "I wonder why.") and its frequency is 1130 am. Now when I was a kid, 1130 was WNEW, and its big program was "The Make-Believe Ballroom." It called itself the "World's Greatest Radio Station," which came from Chicago, where the radio station owned by the Chicago Tribune, received the call letters WGN (for "World's Greatest Newspaper"). At that time, the Tribune owned the Daily News.
The News was founded in 1919 as an illustrated tabloid by Joseph Medill Patterson, cousin of Col. Robert R. McCormick, who owned the Chicago Tribune. McCormick, a staunch isolationist, was the grand nephew of Cyrus McCormick, who invented the reaper, and whose company became, through merger, International Harvester. Patterson's sister, Eleanor (Cissy) Patterson, co-founded Newsday on Long Island in 1940. The News has been owned since 1993 by Mortimer Zuckerman. The Times was not the only family-owned newspaper in New York. END DIGRESSION.
No one should underestimate Mayor Bloomberg's ability to attract and retain public attention, or to bring his message to any voter with eyes and ears. The chance of his becoming President of the United States is remote. But it is not as remote as his chance, as a private citizen never having held public office, of being elected to succeed Mayor Giuliani. If one had asked then who the mayor elected in 2001 would be, the chances are one would have predicted a Democratic officeholder. In fact, that prediction would be the majority view until late in October, 2001.
The prospect of the mayor's candidacy depends on the other nominees. The least likely scenario for him to run, in our judgment, would be a Clinton-McCain contest. The most likely could be a match between Edwards and Huckabee, or Obama and Romney. We are simply parsing the possibilities.
The truth is: who knows?
How can the mayor decide whether to run before the two parties' primaries determine who his opponents will be. He is not running because he has an irresistible desire to be President, he would run if he believes the other candidates are unsuitable for one reason or another. It was characteristic of the mainstream media, who speculated endlessly as to the possibility of his candidacy, to determine that the time had arrived to pull the plug, and to solicit public sentiment to that effect. There is no evidence that the city is any better or any worse governed because of his periodic absence.
This article has tried to examine one example of the effect of the media on elections, particularly primaries. They create momentum for a candidate and then they take it away. We are not suggesting that they make up the news, but they do exaggerate small matters, and follow each other like a wolfpack seeking its prey (or quarry, if you like). That is why it is so satisfying when the voters of a state like New Hampshire trip up both the pollsters and the journalists.
I have no idea who will win which primary. I do not believe, at this point, that the mayor will run for President, but that may change depending on future events. I do believe that the media that fanned the flames of his candidacy should leave him alone until he makes a decision. If they think the Bloomberg story is a tease, they should ignore him. The media should not, however, beat him up for not committing himself to a race before he knows who his adversaries will be.
