OPINION:
There must be something in the water at New York city hall.
Just as the old joke goes that every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president, it seems that nearly every mayor past and present of the country’s largest city thinks they should be president.
John Lindsay, Rudy Giuliani, Bill de Blasio and now Michael Bloomberg. All have had grander ambitions, either during or after their time in the mayoralty.
I suppose it is understandable, as running for governor or senator is hardly a promotion, given the bailiwick one has as His Honor the Mayor.
Just consider this: If New York were its own country, it would have an economy nearly equivalent to Canada or Spain, when measured by gross domestic product. Then there is the New York Police Department. The city’s annual police budget of $5.6 billion is significantly higher than the military spending of several NATO allies.
The latest to run is Mr. Bloomberg. He joined the race for the Democratic nomination not long after his successor in office, Mr. de Blasio, quit following a disastrous campaign that was seen from the get-go seen as quixotic.
Many observers think Mr. Bloomberg has also embarked upon a quixotic campaign. These same voices say he will join Messrs. Lindsay, Giuliani and de Blasio as failed presidential candidates, not least because his strategy is based on skipping the early Democratic primaries and caucuses and instead competing from Super Tuesday onward.
If the strategy sounds familiar, it should. It is the same strategy Mr. Giuliani followed in pursuit of the 2008 Republican nomination, when he bet everything on Florida only to fail miserably. Of course, there is also a huge difference this time.
Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire who says he will self-fund his campaign, has already dropped $100 million on television advertisements.
Essentially, Mr. Bloomberg hopes the Democratic field of candidates will split the vote, allowing him to accumulate enough delegates to be competitive heading into an open nominating convention. He could then buy enough remaining delegates to secure the party’s nomination. (Savvy delegates have long sought donations to cover their hotel accommodation and airfare expenses.)
It is a strategy he has used in the past. First, Mr. Bloomberg bought the Republican ballot line, which he successfully used twice. For his third and final terms, he half-quit the GOP — state law allows a candidate to run with the nomination of multiple parties — to orchestrate a revision of term limits before spending more than $100 million to win re-election in 2009 with just 51 percent of the vote. In total, Mr. Bloomberg spent $286 million over his three elections.
His then-brand of post-partisan, good government was very attractive during the period of time just after the 2008 election of Barack Obama. This was when the Republican Party looked as if it could spend years wandering the political wilderness in search of a national governing majority.
Had it not been for the tea party success of 2010 he may have been an attractive candidate in 2012. However, the smug patrician’s stances today should make him unelectable.
Not only does he advocate grabbing the guns of law-abiding Americans, but he wants to ban them from drinking pop and eating calorie-laden burgers at fast-food restaurants. Yes, his commitment to market-based economics is sadly missing in the Democratic Party writ large, but the rest of his stances are entirely those of a doctrinaire liberal.
Absent his personal fortune of $54 billion he would be completely dismissed. But his ability to spend $6.3 billion — the equivalent of what he spent getting elected mayor — means Mr. Bloomberg could defy the curse that has plagued the presidential campaigns of New York’s other mayors.
• Dennis Lennox is a political commentator and public affairs consultant. Follow @dennislennox on Twitter.
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