Bloomberg Stokes Speculation About Presidential Run

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The New York Sun

ATLANTA – Mayor Bloomberg, stoking speculation about his future presidential ambitions, declared in a speech here that America needs a leadership “capable of hearing both sides.”

“We’ve got to have a political leadership, at every level of government, capable of hearing both sides, accepting what is true in what they say, and acting on it,” Mr. Bloomberg told an audience of several hundred people yesterday at a conference hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mr. Bloomberg has been denying that he wants to run for president, but at an appearance in Connecticut during the weekend, he said that anyone planning to run would deny it. The mayor visited Washington five times in 12 weeks earlier this year, and he’s recently been spotted cultivating national newspaper reporters.

Yesterday, he spoke out on a variety of national issues, from gun control to federal aid formulas.

“The federal responses to avian flu, to the shortage of flu vaccine, or to other crises we’ve faced in recent years, have been episodic and disjointed,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “They illustrate the lack of the kind of national public health infrastructure, at the federal, state, and local levels, that our era demands.

“Neither political party is blameless,” Mr. Bloomberg said, offering AIDS policy as an example. “Talk to one set of advocates, and they insist that the answer to stopping the spread of HIV is distributing more condoms and setting up more needle exchange programs. The other side believes just as passionately that the solution to preventing the spread of HIV lies in persuading people that they can’t just have sex with whomever they want, whenever they feel like it.

“The truth is, both sides are right – and we’ve got to have a political leadership, at every level of government, capable of hearing both sides, accepting what is true in what they say, and acting on it,” the mayor said.

Mr. Bloomberg used the 30-minute speech to juxtapose what he characterized as reactive federal public health policy to the policies that he has used since taking office in New York.

With the city health commissioner, Thomas Frieden, sitting at a front row table, Mr. Bloomberg touted the city’s ban on smoking in restaurants and bars and its new diabetes registry, which tracks patients’ blood sugar levels.

“Some people may call that too intrusive,” Mr. Bloomberg said, mentioning new mandates to improve school nutrition and to encourage New Yorkers to exercise. “I call it dynamic and effective public health.”

The speech was just one in a string of national public appearances by Mr. Bloomberg, a lifelong Democrat who became a Republican to run for mayor five years ago, since the start of his second term in January. Some political analysts have speculated that his newfound affection for the national stage comes from aspirations for the White House.

In the last few months, Mr. Bloomberg has formed a national coalition of mayors to take on illegal guns, sued gun dealers in and outside New York, and outlined his immigration views on several national television networks. Last month, in his commencement address to the Johns Hopkins medical school in Baltimore, Mr. Bloomberg called on graduates to reject partisanship that has tried to cast doubt on evolution and global warming.

Yesterday, the mayor, who has long donated money to public health causes and has a school of public health named after him at Johns Hopkins, reserved much of his rage for the federal government’s system of funding for bioterrorism preparedness, disaster response, and counterterrorism, saying its treatment of New York is “not just absurd, it’s shameful.”

“I really don’t know how anyone can justify a distribution of bioterrorism funds that awards $8.20 per person in North Dakota, when New York City gets less than $3 a person,” he said. But, he said, that is the CDC’s plan. “When it comes to bioterrorism preparedness it is time to put the lid on the federal pork barrel.”

His remarks put the CDC, which as part of the federal government’s executive branch is ultimately overseen by President Bush, in the awkward position of giving a platform to Mr. Bloomberg to criticize both Congress and the Bush administration.

A spokesman for the CDC, Thomas Skinner, denied that the federal government had not done enough to fight chronic disease and said “all states in the union” need to get a base of funding for bioterrorism preparedness. He said once those states have needed protection, states with larger populations, like New York, would likely get funding increases. That answer did not fly with New York lawmakers when the Department of Homeland Security used it to explain its recent funding cut to New York.

Mr. Bloomberg said governments should be using the law to mandate behavior when necessary. He said encouraging people to change behaviors through advertising campaigns is important, but is not enough. He quoted Mark Twain, saying, “Thunder is good. Thunder is impressive, but lightning does the work.

“That has been demonstrated time and again, in areas ranging from mandatory vaccination to requiring automobile seatbelts and reducing drunk driving,” he said.

After the speech, Mr. Bloomberg joined the mayor of Atlanta, Shirley Franklin, who recently became part of his anti-gun coalition, in downtown Atlanta. He then flew back to New York on his private jet and hosted a dinner at Gracie Mansion for the Democratic National Committee, which is in the city to evaluate New York’s bid for the 2008 presidential convention. The city is also bidding on the Republican convention.

When asked yesterday whether he had a preference for which convention New York hosts, Mr. Bloomberg said did not, and that either would be a big boost to the city’s economy.


The New York Sun

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