Bloomberg Says No!

February 28, 2008

Michael Bloomberg says that he’s made a decision. He’s not going to run for president in 2008. Since he has always denied running for president, why does he have to “finally deny” running for president? Don’t you just love politics? Add his name to the list of those not running. We are in for a wild ride and next weeks March 4th primaries will greatly shape what’s ahead for the 2008 races.

After two years of playing coy about his presidential ambitions, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday he will not run for president as an independent, declaring in a newspaper editorial that he might lend his support to a candidate who “takes an independent, nonpartisan approach.”

The 66-year-old billionaire businessman, who aides had said was prepared to spend $1 billion on his own independent campaign, wrote in a New York Times editorial that he will be working to “steer the national conversation away from partisanship and toward unity; away from ideology and toward common sense; away from sound bites and toward substance.”

A billion dollars could certainly do a lot of steering. It might even make a third world country rich!

“I listened carefully to those who encouraged me to run,” Bloomberg wrote, “but I am not — and will not be — a candidate for president.” Bloomberg, who has almost two years left in his second term at City Hall, had publicly denied any interest in running for president since one of his political advisers first planted the seed more than two years ago.

Beginning next Wednesday, March 5th, a Bloomberg campaign would have had to start gathering signatures to get on the ballot in Texas, which has one of the earliest deadlines. Bloomberg’s preparation for a presidential bid was extensive. The work included mass polling and nationwide data collection to determine his viability as a candidate, as well as detailed study and preparation for a state-by-state ballot access drive.

Aides and associates had said in recent days that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama’s rise in the Democratic contest against New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was increasingly diminishing the chance that Bloomberg would run. So, what does that mean? Is he against Hillary? He’s for Obama? Que?

In the Times editorial, posted online Wednesday night, Bloomberg wrote that while he is not running, the race is too important for him to stay completely out. So, I guess we’ll know sometime down the road.

Written by Ernie · Filed Under A Third Party?