For the first time since he was elected to the city’s highest public office, Mayor Bloomberg attended the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday, stirring speculation about his interests in the nation’s capitol.

The event was important enough to bring his girlfriend Diana Taylor along, even though she was passed over earlier this year for the job of head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

And it was not just a dinner in Washington, but a day of socializing that included a round of golf with the beltway power broker Vernon Jordan and two Republic senators, John Sununu of the critical primary state of New Hampshire, and Gordon Smith of Oregon.

“He’s testing the waters for a presidential campaign,” the editor of the Weekly Standard, William Kristol, said outside the Washington Hilton Ballroom, which seated 2,600 guests for dinner. Mr. Bloomberg sat in between the actress Melina Kanakaredes of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and Ann Romney, wife of Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, already a candidate for 2008.

Mr. Bloomberg had a warm reception at the dinner, which drew several friends from New York, such as Lally Weymouth and Henry Kissinger. “I’ll support Bloomberg for anything,” Mr. Kissinger said.

“After his first win I wouldn’t rule anything out. He has great political skill,” the political talk show host John McLaughlin said.

Others were skeptical. “I asked him my self if he were running, a while ago, and he said no. Honestly I think Rudy’s the one to watch,” the host of “Hardball,” Chris Matthews, said.

“I don’t think any New York politician including Clinton has any possibility of running for office. Giuliani could but he’s got to switch on guns and abortion,” the conservative pundit Ann Coulter said.

Some focused on the mayor’s responsibility to represent New York in a room that included the mayors of Los Angeles and New Orleans. “He’s helping promote New York,” the publisher of BizBash, who serves on the board of the tourism agency NYC & Company, David Adler, said.

Indeed, perhaps the mayor simply had New York’s best interests in mind. “My guess is that he is not all that interested in Washington except in what it can do for New York,” Rep. Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri, said.

Mr. Bloomberg has said repeatedly he is not considering a run for president, but would focus on his philanthropy when his term ends.

The Republican fund-raiser Georgette Mosbacher is taking the mayor at his word. “He says what he thinks and he has never been shy saying what’s on his mind,” she said. So why was Mayor Bloomberg at the party? “I think he just wants to come and have a fun evening,” Ms. Mosbacher said.

“It’s a happening place. It’s an event that draws up and down the East Coast, and so it’s natural that he be here,” the newscaster Judy Woodruff said.

Beyond this one night, Mr. Bloomberg has some specific policy ambitions in Washington. There’s the matter of gun control, abortion rights, and housing policies. “Mr. Bloomberg had a visible presence in Washington in his first term and would in his second. The difference is that in the first term, he was focused on tough decisions for New York…Now he is going to Washington and speaking more broadly,” the mayor’s spokesman, Stuart Loeser, said.

Washington doesn’t have the final world, though. The idea of Bloomberg in 2008 is taking hold far from the East Coast.

“People from all over the country e-mail me saying why doesn’t Mike Bloomberg run for president? The interest is grassroots and dispersed,” a professor of urban politics at New York University, Mitchell Moss, said.

The Republican pollster Frank Luntz sees Mayor Bloomberg as a model independent candidate. “This is the one guy who could run as an independent. He defines what a third-party candidate could be,” Mr. Luntz said.

And a third-party candidate may have traction in the presidential election of 2008. A Rasmussen Reports survey released Thursday had a third-party and a Democratic candidate in a near tie, at 30%, with a Republican lagging at 21%.

One independent choice Mr. Bloomberg made Saturday was to miss the party everyone wants to get into: the Bloomberg LP after-party, which during his absence has gained a reputation as the best party in Washington. Instead, Mr. Bloomberg took a plane back to New York Saturday night, and was probably long in bed when the party at the Macedonian Embassy ended at 4 AM.

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And on the afterparties: The Bloomberg LP party was on the cutting edge of the cool and I’m not talking about the miniature water falls that were part of the decor. This year what had everyone talking was checkin at laptops, which Bloomberg employees held in their arms while standing next to the velvet ropes; and check-out, which included a box of chocolates, a mug, and black terry slippers labeled “the afterparty 06.” “They think through everything,” one observer said, which meant they’d figured out that women’s feet are in great pain after standing in heels all night. Where did the balance of power shift on the party scale? The chic decor and chic guests were at the youthful Reuters party at the k-streetlounge where the DJ Thievery Corporation had people dancing for hours. And those drinks The menu included the Cheney Shot made with Wild Turkey or Famous Grouse (be cause “duck is not just a bird it’s also a verb”); the Condoleezza, made with rice vodka and sake (“Clear, perfectly chilled very strong, and 100% rice”); the White Wine Spitzer (a “by-the-book cocktail offer ing sufficient hydration to sustain you throughout the evening with little chance of pleasure”); the “Rove Rage,” brandy with coffee liquor “to let loose a little righteous anger,” and the Barack O’Bomber, vodka and Jagermeister that was described as “a favorite with the younger set. Expect this cocktail to mellow and develop some subtlety in about five years.” And on their way out, guests were offered boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

Please see The New York Sun Web site for photos from the event.

agordon@nysun.com