With mayoral control of the schools hanging in the balance, a state budget deal still undone, a teachers union in its 19th month of working without a contract, and the city facing a $5 billion budget gap, Mayor Bloomberg skipped town yesterday afternoon for a visit to Washington, where he was the headline attraction at a fundraiser aimed at maintaining Republican control of Congress. The event was closed to the press.

We certainly don’t begrudge the mayor a chance to get out of the city once in a while, and, as our Timothy Starks suggests on page one, a little cultivation of the Republican Congressional leadership may pay off in terms of federal money that ends up flowing to the city. Still, in the long run, the problems that New York City faces will not be solved by more infusions of cash from Washington, however well intentioned. Which, with admission to the closed-door “VIP reception” with Mr. Bloomberg going for $1,000, is all the more reason to ask the obvious questions.

One of the reasons a lot of New Yorkers voted for Mr. Bloomberg is that they believed his argument that because he was so rich and he was running with his own money, he wouldn’t be compromised by having to raise money from special interests. Events like the one yesterday undercut that claim. Which Washington fat cats paid $1,000 to attend a VIP reception with Mr. Bloomberg? Who did the mayor chat with and what did they talk about?

The Clinton administration, after its White House coffees, had to face these kinds of questions, and it sent the White House spokesman, Mike McCurry, out in January of 1997 to announce “everyone agrees that we should make fundraising events sponsored by the Democratic National Committee open to the press.” A Democratic National Committee spokeswoman, Amy Weiss Tobe, even boasted that year that “our fundraising events, unlike Republican fundraising events, are open to the press.”

Mayor Bloomberg’s fundraising activities and those of the Republicans in Washington are protected under the First Amendment rights of free speech, freedom to petition for redress of grievances, and freedom of assembly. So too are those of the contributors. But the more the mayor and the Republicans in Congress carry on like this, the more ammunition they give to the Democrats and to those Republicans like Senator McCain who seek to trample those First Amendment rights by sharply restricting political fundraising. If Mr. Bloomberg can’t meet even Bill Clinton’s standard for sunlight in fundraising, he’s setting a low standard for himself, indeed.