If Mayor Bloomberg decides to go ahead with a presidential run, one of his first obstacles may be explaining to voters why, for the past two years, he has been denying that he has any plan to run for president.

As he lays the groundwork for a presidential campaign by taking on national policy issues, publicly bemoaning partisan gridlock in Washington, and maintaining a rigorous travel schedule that next week will take him to Oklahoma for a political meeting that could pave the way for a third-party candidacy, Mr. Bloomberg is simultaneously firing off rounds of presidential denials.

RELATED: An Editorial, ‘Bloomberg’s Denial’

On a New Year’s Eve show on ABC, he added another denial to the growing list, saying he “will not run for president.” In mid-December, he opened up more than usual about his plans, saying that if he were to run, he knows whom he’d seek out.

Political analysts predict that if Mr. Bloomberg runs for president, his repeated denials will appear in attack ads from rival candidates seeking to discredit him. Competitors could try to portray him as an indecisive politician who has been dishonest with the public about his plans.

“The denials well could become the subject of negative campaign ads,” a political consultant, Henry Sheinkopf, said. He added that the criticism could sting a Bloomberg campaign, but wouldn’t derail it.

A professor of political science at Baruch College, Douglas Muzzio, said he thinks the denials would be used against Mr. Bloomberg, but said he didn’t think the attacks would stick.

Mr. Sheinkopf said the billionaire mayor could deafen the negative publicity by bankrolling a wave of positive coverage. He predicted Mr. Bloomberg would spend as much as $750 million on a campaign, with about $600 million earmarked for television spots and $100 million for targeted direct mail.

“That kind of media barrage could drown out criticism,” he said.

An attack ad from a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Michael Huckabee, against another candidate, the former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, offers an indication of how Mr. Bloomberg’s competitors could attempt to turn his denials into a political liability.

In the ad, which Mr. Huckabee showed reporters on Monday but said he is not airing on television, Mr. Huckabee says: “If a man’s dishonest to obtain a job, he’ll be dishonest on the job,” the Associated Press reported.

The ad accuses Mr. Romney of lobbing false attacks against Mr. Huckabee and another Republican candidate, Senator McCain.

The chairman of the department of politics and international relations at Drake University in Iowa, Arthur Sanders, said it would be hard for Mr. Bloomberg’s denials to be used against him in a similar way because his competitors would need to prove he has been lying about his White House intentions.

“But how can you prove he is being dishonest?” he asked. “Nobody suffers because Bloomberg is piddling around, trying to decide whether or not to run.”

Mr. Sanders said he thinks Mr. Bloomberg would be most inclined to enter the race if the Democratic nominee is John Edwards and the Republican nominee is Mr. Huckabee.

A political science professor at the University of Virginia, Larry Sabato, said he didn’t think Mr. Bloomberg’s denials would come back to haunt him.

“Nobody expects politicians to be truthful all the time anyway,” Mr. Sabato said. “He has to buy time until the nominees are selected. He has to see who the nominees are and how dissatisfied the general public is with them.”

If Mr. Bloomberg launches an official campaign, he is expected to explain his about-face by saying he changed his mind after the selection of the Democratic and Republican nominees for president. A professor of public administration at Columbia University, Steven Cohen, said that if Mr. Bloomberg decided to run, he’d likely say that neither party nominated a centrist candidate who could lead the country.

“Depending on the nominees, that’s where he’d get his rationale for his own run,” he said.

Mr. Muzzio said Mr. Bloomberg’s denials thus far have been part of a smart strategy that has kept speculation about his presidential plans soaring two days before the Iowa caucuses. Even if Mr. Bloomberg doesn’t run for president, Mr, Muzzio said the presidential buzz is keeping him relevant as he heads into the second half of his second and final term as mayor and could boost his philanthropic efforts.

“No matter what happens, this has been great for Mike Bloomberg and for Mike Bloomberg’s agenda,” he said.

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‘I’ve Said It 1,000 Times’

Below are some of the many denials Mayor Bloomberg has made to speculation that he may run for president, as reported by The New York Sun, the New York Post, the Associated Press, the New York Times, ABC News, CNN, and WCBS TV.

NOVEMBER 2005 “I think at my age, I’ll be very happy to spend the next four years in the city, working for this city … I’ll send my mother a copy of a letter that suggested I had an interest in running for president, which I don’t. She’ll be very pleased that anybody even mentioned my name.”

NOVEMBER 9, 2005 “I’m going to focus on being mayor and then after that I’ve talked before about my next career would be in philanthropy and I will certainly stay with that.”

FEBRUARY 15, 2006 “Which letter of the word ‘No’ do you not understand?”

“When I get done with this in four years, I’ve said that my next career will be in philanthropy. That has not changed.”

JUNE 11, 2006 “Absolutely not. And anybody who’s running will say exactly that.”

AUGUST 22, 2006 “I think you can expect me to be mayor through my term and leave political life and try and do something else and continue to make the world better for my kids.”

“I do not know how many times I have to say I am not going to run for president. But I’ll say it one more time. I have no plans to run for president.”

MAY 7, 2007 “I think it’s very flattering that people would joke about running for federal office, but the truth of the matter is the most likely scenario is that I serve out this term of 988 days, something like that … 969, who’s counting, and then go on with a career in philanthropy would be my next guess.”

“I’ve said that. I’m not running for president and I’m not planning to. What else do you need? I’ve said it 1,000 times.”

JUNE 18, 2007 “I’m not a candidate for president. My next career will be in philanthropy. I’ve done the government thing.”

JUNE 20, 2007 “I’m not a candidate.”

“If everyone in the world was dead and I was the only one alive? Yeah, sure. I mean, come on.”

“I’ve got the best job in government and I’m looking forward to doing that and afterward, as you know, I’ve bought a building to set up a foundation in, I’ve started making some grants.”

AUGUST 21, 2007 “Nobody’s going to elect me president of the United States.”

“What I’d like to do is to be able to influence the dialogue. I’m a citizen.”

NOVEMBER 1, 2007 “You’re asking the wrong question. What you have to ask is why can’t we get the candidates that are running, and there are plenty declared candidates, both Republican and Democrat, why can’t they stop this partisan bickering in Washington? Why can’t they address the issues?”

“Look, this country does not need another candidate, and I am not a candidate.”

“I’ve got 791 days left to go in my job, and I plan to finish that.”

NOVEMBER 5, 2007 “I suppose that the honest answer is that this is America and if anybody’s going to run, they’ll at some point inform you.”

NOVEMBER 17, 2007 “I’m not running.”

DECEMBER 18, 2007 “If I was going to run, I know exactly who to go to.”

DECEMBER 31, 2007 “No, I will not run for president, but I will speak out to try to get people to really focus on the issues and to get rid of partisanship and special interests.”