| Notes |
Bloomberg float tests Clinton relationship
They're not close personal friends, but Hillary Clinton and Michael Bloomberg worked well together in New York.
By ANNIE KARNI 01/23/2016 07:49 PM EST Updated 01/24/2016 01:55 PM EST
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Michael Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton, pictured here in 2002, have had a “highly functional” working relationship. | AP Photo
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In the summer of 2008, after Sen. Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic presidential nomination, Michael Bloomberg visited her in Washington, D.C., and said he wanted to throw her a “welcome home” party.
That August, in the backyard of Gracie Mansion, the mayor invited 400 of her closest friends to celebrate her return to New York politics. The cast of the Broadway musical "Hair" performed. The actor Chevy Chase made jokes. Barbara Walters and Oscar de la Renta hobnobbed, and the crowd sipped Big Apple martinis.
Bloomberg had already inserted himself into the presidential field that cycle — the billionaire mayor had mulled a White House bid of his own that would have upset the field. But Clinton, attendees recalled, showed a good sense of humor about it all.
Taking the microphone, she said she was deeply touched by the party, which the billionaire mayor paid for himself. She hadn’t realized he cared so deeply for her, she said. And to think that he had gone so far as to visit her in Washington, where he seemed to want to know everything about the campaign — what she liked about it, and what she would do differently if she had it to do over again.
Then, her punch line: She said she noticed at that point that Kevin Sheekey was actually taping the conversation, a reference to a close Bloomberg aide who had been the architect of his potential presidential run — and a barbed joke insinuating an underlying competition between the state’s two highest-profile pols.
During the seven years Clinton and Bloomberg overlapped as representatives of New York, they enjoyed what many in their circles called a “highly functional” working relationship — incredibly high praise considering the normal state of dysfunction that defines the interactions of New York elected officials.
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Bloomberg drawing up plans for presidential run
By GLENN THRUSH and ANNIE KARNI
But that relationship of mutual respect now stands to be tested. Eight years after the welcome home party, Clinton is again showing vulnerability in a race she was expected to win. And Bloomberg, who in 2014 returned to lead the company he founded, is once again thinking about the possibility of a run of his own.
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When Clinton and Bloomberg served in public office together, the former mayor admired her workhorse attitude toward her job — and that she didn’t embody the kind of political grandstanding he abhors. She respected his nuts-and-bolts mayoralty and his data-driven approach to policy.
They were never close, personal friends. Footing the bill for a nice party was one thing, for instance, but a gesture such as offering help in retiring some of her $20 million in campaign debt that year was never on the table.
Still, his associates said, Bloomberg connected better with Clinton than he did with her husband, Bill Clinton. And her style more closely matched his own than that of her Senate colleague Chuck Schumer. Both also held rather low opinions of future Mayor Bill de Blasio, insiders said, and at one point in 2012 Bloomberg tried to recruit Clinton to run for mayor to succeed him.
Despite mutual respect and a good working relationship, the two have had little contact in recent years. One exception was a joint appearance in 2014, when Bloomberg’s foundation hosted Clinton for an event highlighting a data program run by the Clinton Foundation.
"If my mother and father knew that I was on a first-name basis with Hillary Clinton, it would be a very big deal,” the former mayor gushed at the event. Last year, his younger daughter, Georgina Bloomberg, told the Daily News she was on board with Clinton because she was interested in voting for the first female president. The relationship seemed solid enough that Michael Bloomberg’s name has been on the pitch list for Priorities USA, the super PAC making multimillion-dollar asks to support Clinton’s presidential bid, a source with knowledge of Priorities' fundraising told POLITICO.
The Clinton campaign declined to comment on Bloomberg’s potential entry into the race. And the former mayor’s aides say that he is polling his chances more out of his general disdain for the fractured Republican Party than out of any desire to challenge Clinton — in fact, if she is the Democratic nominee, they say, he is less likely to mount a bid of his own. But aides said he has expressed some dismay over how she has been pushed to the left by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Bloomberg has been turned off by what he views as Clinton’s changing of positions for political expediency — including her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she once called the “gold standard” of trade deals when she was secretary of state. That was a problem for him, said a source familiar with Bloomberg’s thinking.
As he considers a run, aides said he is evaluating the current slate of candidates on two criteria — is there a candidate who could actually run successfully, and is there a candidate who could govern successfully? Hillary Clinton — caught in a race that’s too close to call in Iowa and running behind Sanders in New Hampshire polls — is only passing the latter half of his test, aides said.
They pointed to the fact that there’s no modern precedent for a Democratic nominee winning the nomination after losing both Iowa and New Hampshire (Bill Clinton succeeded in 1992, but he did not compete in Iowa because home state Sen. Tom Harkin was running that year).
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Bloomberg trial balloon has Republicans laughing
By ANNA PALMER
The New York Times reported Saturday that at a dinner party hosted by former Treasury Secretary and Clinton supporter Roger Altman, Bloomberg described Clinton as a flawed politician and raised concerns about the ongoing investigation into her email use at the State Department.
That account surprised some Bloomberg associates, who had never before heard him criticize Clinton — even in private. "My sense was that certainly their offices worked exceptionally well together,” said former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who was a close Bloomberg ally and sits on Clinton’s New York Leadership Council. “He had a lot of respect for her and held her in high regard. I've never heard him say a bad word about her.”
When asked her opinion on Bloomberg’s potential run, Quinn punted: “I have none at the moment,” she said. “Of course, I’m very excited about supporting Hillary.”
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