Aide on Bloomberg White House Bid: 'Time Will Tell'

An aide to Mayor Bloomberg added fuel to speculation that Mr. Bloomberg will seek the White House during a nonpartisan summit in Oklahoma today, saying the question of his candidacy will be answered in "time."

When asked if the mayor will run for president, his chief political adviser, Kevin Sheekey, who is exploring a possible presidential run for Mr. Bloomberg, veered from the usual denials used by the mayor.

"Time will tell," Mr. Sheekey told The New York Sun.

RELATED: Transcript of Bipartisan Forum

Mr. Bloomberg is one of 16 participants at the political meeting in Oklahoma hosted by a former senator and president of the University of Oklahoma, David Boren, and a former senator of Georgia, Samuel Nunn. Mr. Bloomberg and Senator Hagel of Nebraska are the only two participants currently holding elected office.

Mr. Bloomberg, speaking on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, told a gathering of about 1,000 people at the University of Oklahoma that voters should elect people to public office based on their competency. If Mr. Bloomberg runs for president as an independent candidate, he is expected to campaign on his management skills, honed as the founder of a financial media company, Bloomberg LP.

"What we all want and, I think, so do you, is we want to make sure that the ideas that come up are ideas that are considered based on whether it will work not whose idea it was," he said this morning.

"Somehow or other we seem to have lost our vision," Mr. Bloomberg said. "We have become afraid, and there is no reason for America to be afraid. We are a country of optimists. We believe we can do everything and we want to get back to that. And this panel is not here to criticize. It is simply to help people find ways we can pull together and in the end get what we all want, and that's results."

Mr. Bloomberg criticized what he described as a breakdown of collaboration in Washington, calling the system "dysfunctional."

"There is no working together," he said. "No 'Lets do what's right for this country.'"

He added: "There is no willingness to focus on big ideas. Congress and all of government seems to focus on the small things. … They are not willing to stand up, and I think every one of the people here will tell you, our experience is the public may not agree with you when you take a position, but they respect you for it. We used to have that, and we don't anymore."

Participants of the meeting said it was not called to support a third party candidate for president, and Mr. Bloomberg denied harboring plans to run for the White House, saying: "I am not a candidate, number one. I am a retired businessman and mayor."

He said he is optimistic the presidential candidates will listen to the panel's recommendations to tackle the problems facing America.