Mayor Not Candidate, but Tries Out Stump Speech

NORMAN, Okla., Jan. 7, 2008 — -- Wearing a blue suit, a red-and-blue striped tie and a ready smile, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg climbed the stage and launched a political sideshow here this morning.

With 16 political figures accompanying him, he received a standing round of applause when he was introduced by University of Oklahoma president and former Senate intelligence committee co-chair David Boren.

The forum's stated purpose was to promote bipartisanism and support what the panelists believe is in the common interests of all America — forcing the two major political parties to reach beyond the polarizing elements in their own parties to the larger electorate and its concerns.

"This is the window of opportunity to do it," said former Republican New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman. But it was interest in the presidential ambitions of Bloomberg that filled the auditorium of the university's music school.

It brought two New York Times two reporters and an editorial writer to this university town.

That same interest brought New York Daily News opinion writer Michael Goodwin and the paper's City Hall bureau chief.

And it filled 300 to 400 seats — a good chunk of the center orchestra section of the venue— with camera crews, radio reporters and political bloggers.

Bloomberg brought three New York cheesecakes — plain, vanilla and chocolate swirl — his press secretary and Kevin Sheekey, the man The New York Times recently dubbed "deputy mayor for running for president."

He also came with a now-familiar swirl of rumors that the multibillionaire mayor is prepared to spend as much as a billion dollars of his own money to run.

"No comment" is all his press secretary, Stu Loeser, would say when asked about the latest rumor. That rumor is that Bloomberg is giving it two months before he decides whether to run.

It is a question in line with the stated ambitions of the panel to push for change.

"Our political system is, at the least, badly bent and many are concluding that it is broken at a time where America must lead boldly at home and abroad," read the invitation.