Profile:As one of the richest men in the US, Michael Bloomberg could easily spend $1 billion on a campaign to reach the White House. But he hasn't yet shown his hand, writes Denis Stauntonin Washington
At the Palm Restaurant in downtown Washington, one of the city's most gossipy political haunts, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg sat down to dinner last week with maverick Republican senator Chuck Hagel and set off a firestorm of speculation about his political ambitions.
Hagel, who has been toying with a presidential run for months but is out of favour with his own party because of his opposition to the Iraq war, poured a can of petrol on the flames on Sunday when he told a television interviewer that Bloomberg should consider an independent run for the presidency in 2008.
The signs have been accumulating for weeks, as Bloomberg travelled to Texas to talk about his national energy plan and hosted a climate change conference with Bill Clinton. He recently re-launched his website, although he cannot run for a third term as mayor and there are numerous reports of his advisers meeting with political strategists and pollsters.
This week, the Washington Times reported that Bloomberg is prepared to spend $1 billion (€742 million) of his personal fortune on an independent run for the White House - a sum not even the most successful fundraisers in either of the main parties could hope to match.
In the State capital of Albany this week to unveil his plan to introduce traffic congestion charges in New York, Bloomberg said he was not running for any higher office, pointing out that he still has more than 900 days left as mayor. He has conspicuously failed to rule out a presidential bid, however, and his deputy Kevin Sheekey said recently that Bloomberg would consider entering the race if the Democratic and Republican nominees marginalised the political centre.
"It's not impossible that that window could open and he could run a viable campaign. And if it opens, he should consider it," Sheekey said.
Veteran Washington commentator Mark Shields believes this is such an extraordinary and transformational time in American politics that nothing should be ruled out.
"In 2006 we went through an election where, just prior to the election, for the first time in American history, voters had negative valuations or judgments on both political parties. We've never had that before. It requires that sense of dissatisfaction with the two major parties for a third party to have a chance," he says.
Third party candidates are not unusual in US presidential elections and many Democrats believe that Ralph Nader allowed George Bush to defeat Al Gore in 2000, just as many Republicans maintain that Ross Perot enabled Bill Clinton to snatch a second term from Bush's father when he won 18.9 per cent of the vote in 1992.
"Bloomberg is Ross Perot on steroids," former Federal Election Commission chairman Michael Toner told the Washington Times. "He could turn the political landscape of this election upside down, spend as much money as he wanted and proceed directly to the general election. He would have resources to hire an army of petition-gatherers in those states where thousands of petitions are required to qualify a third-party presidential candidate to be on the ballot."
Independent candidates face greater obstacles than Republicans and Democrats, not least because the president is chosen by an electoral college rather than by the popular vote. If no candidate wins a majority of electoral college votes, the president is chosen by Congress, where almost all members belong to the two main parties.
"The election laws in the United States are written by the two parties to discourage third parties from getting on, or independent movements from forming. So they create obstacles or impediments that are surmountable but very difficult," Shields says. "Bloomberg does have an enormous advantage in that it does require money as well as time and he does have that."
He certainly does. Recent estimates of Bloomberg's personal wealth range from $5.5 billion to $13 billion (€4 billion to €9.6 billion), but there is no doubt that he is one of the richest men in the US. Apart from his town house on the Upper East Side, he owns four holiday homes, including a house in London, a condo in the Colorado ski resort of Vail and a mansion in Bermuda, where Perot is among his neighbours.
Born and raised in Boston, where his father worked as a bookkeeper at a dairy, Bloomberg borrowed money and parked cars to pay his way through college at Johns Hopkins University before going on to Harvard Business School. He moved to New York in 1966 to work as an equities trader at Salomon Brothers, becoming a partner in the firm before he was fired after a takeover.
In his autobiography Bloomberg by Bloomberg, he recounts how he rose so high at Salomon Brothers by catching the eye of his superiors.
"I came in every morning at 7am, getting there before everyone else except Billy Salomon. When he needed to borrow a match or talk sports, I was the only other person in the trading room, so he talked to me." He would also stay later than everyone except John Gutfreund, the managing partner, so that when Gutfreund needed someone to make an after-hours call to the biggest clients, "I was the someone".
A $10 million (€7.4 billion) pay-off allowed Bloomberg to go into business on his own and he started Bloomberg LP, which sold financial information terminals to Wall Street. The secret of the business's success was that it not only provided information but offered tools to make that information more useful, adding new products over the years as the company started an international news service and a television network.
As he became richer, Bloomberg also became more philanthropic, supporting everything from public health projects and academic institutions to cultural institutes and Jewish charities.
A lifelong Democrat, Bloomberg surprised friends and rivals alike when he decided to try to succeed Rudy Giuliani as New York's mayor in 2001. Realising that he had no chance of winning the Democratic nomination, he became a Republican, spending $75 million (€55.6 million) of his own money on the campaign.
Bloomberg came from behind to win the race, partly due to the support of the Independence Party, which Perot had formed in the 1990s. Although he ran as a Republican, the mayor held firm to his liberal views on issues such as abortion and gay rights and adopted a "post-partisan" approach to running the city, drawing up a business plan and seeking compromise rather than confrontation with unions and community groups.
Bloomberg boasted recently that he had already fulfilled 96 of the 100 promises he made before winning re-election in 2005 and his record on the economy, crime and education are impressive.
His record is not unblemished and a federal judge this week ordered that the city should release 600 pages of documents concerning police surveillance of activists in advance of the 2004 Republican convention in New York. Police handling of protests surrounding the convention was criticised as heavy-handed and Bloomberg has been quick to ban political protests in the city.
However, New Yorkers like him. A poll this week showed that 56 per cent believe he is a better mayor than Giuliani, compared with 29 per cent who prefer Giuliani.
"That's surprising in the sense that ordinarily people remember fondly previous occupants of the office and they're loath to give high marks to the one that does hold the office," says Shields.
As Republicans and Democrats struggle through the primary season, Bloomberg can afford to wait until next spring before deciding whether to join the race. Much will depend on the identity of the nominees from the main parties but Shields believes that, if either party chooses a deeply ideological candidate, Bloomberg could become attractive to many voters.
"The question would become: what does Bloomberg run on? What would be the theme of a Bloomberg campaign? I think there's a craving in the country for unity. I think that's part of the great appeal that the Obama candidacy offers and it's part of a reaction to the Bush polarisation of politics," he says.
Republicans, who are demoralised and in disarray over the Iraq war and have yet to warm to any of their own candidates, are certainly nervous about the prospect of a Bloomberg presidential bid. Democrats have reason to fear him too, however, as the mayor could prevent a Democrat such as Hillary Clinton from winning major states such as New York, New Jersey and even California.
If Clinton is indeed the Democratic nominee and the Republicans choose Giuliani, their current frontrunner, Americans could face a three-way race between two mayors and a senator from New York.
New York Post commentator John Podhoretz this week threw cold water over speculation about Bloomberg's presidential ambitions, listing a number of reasons why he has no hope of victory.
"First, because independents can't win. Second, because he's a Jew. Third, because he's too short. Fourth, because he's way, way, way too rich. Fifth, because, I mean, come on. Sixth, because, I mean, really," he said.
Shields, who notes that Bloomberg has yet to take a position on the Iraq war, the central political issue in the US, agrees that a Bloomberg run is a long shot but warns that the power of presidential ambitions should never be underestimated.
"I think he's an enormously practical man and I think he'll make a clear-headed and reasonably unemotional decision. For that reason, I think it's less likely that he'll end up running," he says.
"But once one is bitten by that presidential virus, there's no known cure for it other than embalming fluid." Who is he? Mayor of New York and self-made multibillionaire
Why is he in the news? Reported to be preparing to spend $1 billion (€742 million) of his own money on a presidential bid in 2008
Most appealing characteristic: Generosity - he has given hundreds of millions of dollars to a wide variety of charities, with no strings attached
Least appealing characteristic: Heavy- handedness - approved police surveillance of peaceful protesters before 2004 Republican convention in New York and cracked down hard on protests
Most likely to say: How much do you need?
Least likely to say: Do you have anything cheaper?