Richard Parsons: Does He Sound Familiar?

With the end of Mayor Bloomberg's two terms in City Hall starting to come into view and a wide-open candidate slate to become his 2009 successor, Time Warner's CEO, Richard Parsons, yesterday praised the mayor in a way that made Mr. Bloomberg sound a bit like himself.

"I have no idea what his ideology is. None," Mr. Parsons said. "I'm not even sure he even has one, other than he likes to solve problems."
Mr. Parsons spoke for less than an hour to a standing-room crowd of more than 300 at Baruch College, interlacing corporate ideas about leading a Fortune 500 company with lofty declarations about the power of religion, the sanctity of family, and the virtues of public service.

"That's about how you make people's lives better," Mr. Parsons, co-chairman of the mayor's Commission for Economic Opportunity, said, referring to public service. "It's a very ambiguous and fuzzy and difficult-to-discern bottom line."

As a prospective political candidate, Mr. Parsons has a poignant political backstory — whether it's his childhood in Brooklyn (he moved in his with his grandmother after a household accident) or his pragmatic political philosophy (he's a Rockefeller Republican who says he acts to make his family proud).

Still, while Mr. Parsons spoke about faith in God hewn through his grandmother's Bible readings, he said he is an unabashed manager who demands results — suggesting he would bring a Bloomberg-type form of leadership to City Hall.

If Mr. Parsons does attempt to become New York City's 109th mayor, his management style would likely be markedly more deferential than that of Mr. Bloomberg's predecessor Mayor Giuliani, who was a hands-on mayor at once praised and criticized for the way he led.
"I don't care how smart you are. You can't stay on top of everything," Mr. Parsons said.

Political consultants said regardless of whether he could win, he would profoundly change the race if he decides to run in 2009.
A Baruch professor at the college where Mr. Parsons spoke, Douglas Muzzio, said the presumptive Democratic candidates for mayor — Rep. Anthony Weiner, Comptroller William Thompson Jr., the Bronx president, Adolfo Carrión Jr., and the City Council speaker, Christine Quinn — would need to adjust their strategies.

"It throws the traditional calculations out to a large extent," Mr. Muzzio said. Those calculations changed in 2001, when Mr. Bloomberg was elected.

"Obviously Mayor Bloomberg set the stage for the notion of the businessman mayor, so none of this is a surprise," a former deputy mayor in the Giuliani administration, Fran Reiter, said yesterday, adding: "This is a reality today — that they could be facing someone like this, and they need to be prepared for it," referring to potential opponents of Mr. Parsons, a Republican.

A Democratic political consultant, Hank Sheinkopf, noted that Mr. Parsons the candidate could face a close examination of the stock price and internal conflicts at Time Warner.

"And every time someone thinks of Dick Parsons, they're going to look at their cable bills and get crazy," Mr. Sheinkopf said.

He said Republican mayors in New York City tend to get elected during crises — Mayor La Guardia rose amid corruption, Mayor Lindsay because of a census shift, and Mayor Giuliani because of the crime epidemic.

"Where's the crisis to elect the Republican?" Mr. Sheinkopf said. "At present, none exists." Mr. Sheinkopf said Mr. Parsons could make history beyond just the 2009 race.

"If he did decide to run, he would be an extremely formidable candidate. He's got the smarts. He's got the bucks. He's got the personality," Mr. Muzzio said. "The question is, does he have the interest and does he have the drive?"

Yesterday, Mr. Parsons would not say explicitly whether he had the interest or the drive to run for mayor once his contract expires with Time Warner in May 2008.

"What's next?" Mr. Parsons said. "Cool-out time. I haven't learned much in life, but it's not smart to let people push you into decisions."