Fmr. Bloomberg Adviser: ’08 Run ’80% Probable’ if Parties Nominate Extremists

ABC News’ Gary Langer Reports: At an event last night sponsored by the New York Chapter of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Ester Fuchs – a Columbia University professor and, until recently, an adviser to New York Mayor Bloomberg – speculated that Bloomberg would run for president as an independent if both parties nominated candidates from their "extreme wings."

The example she gave was Romney and Edwards. With those two as their parties’ nominees, she said, it was, in her view, "80 percent probable" that Bloomberg would run. He’d have to be convinced that there was enough space between the two nominees for an independent to drive through.

Clearly this was Fuchs’ own hunch, not any approved pronouncement. But she is in a position to know something about Bloomberg’s thinking. She was his "special adviser for governance and strategic planning" in his first term, then served on his re-election campaign as policy adviser for the second-term agenda, and was appointed by Bloomberg to serve as chair of the city’s Charter Revision Commission.