Billionaire businessman and two-term New York mayor Michael Bloomberg may reportedly run as an independent in the 2008 US Presidential elections.
WASHINGTON, DC: Billionaire businessman and two-term New York mayor Michael Bloomberg may run as an independent in the 2008 US Presidential elections, a Washington Post report indicates.
Although, publicly, Bloomberg has denied any interest in running for the White House, the Washington Post report says that Bloomberg has been discussing his plans with potential supporters for long enough for analysts to conclude that he might pit himself against candidates such as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain and Joe Biden, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, and former senator John Edwards.
If Bloomberg, the owner of a self-named financial services company, does enter the race, it would make him the third serious candidate from New York to do so after Giuliani and Rodham Clinton. He would not be, however, the first big-bucks independent candidate in recent times to run for the highest office in the US.
In 1992, Texas billionaire Ross Perot ran against the senior George Bush and Bill Clinton, investing $60 million of his personal fortune. Perot won 19 per cent of the votes and was thought to be instrumental in killing Bush's hopes of retaining the White House. Perot ran again in 1996, but received only 8 per cent of the popular vote. Bloomberg, too, would run for office with his own money.
According to Forbes magazine, his net worth is estimated at $5 billion, a portion of which he regularly donates to philanthropic causes such as education. In September 2006, he was ranked 44 on the Forbes Magazine’s 400 Richest People in America list. Earlier this month, the same magazine ranked him 142 in the 500 Richest People in the World list.
The Post report says that Stu Loesser, Bloomberg’s press secretary, denied that his boss is considering a presidential campaign.
The report said Loesser explained the genesis of the stories about the mayor’s presidential ambitions: “He has dinner with people. People ask him questions. He engages in conversation. He has been very clear and explicit that he is not running for president.”
The report, however, quoted an unidentified close friend of Bloomberg as saying that the campaign is still on his mind.
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