New York Times writer Matt Bai has this interesting article about Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The article is triggered by Bloomberg’s appearance on December 13 at the “No Labels” meeting in Washington, D.C. Bai suggests that Bloomberg still may decide to run for President as an independent, and that he can wait until the 2012 primaries. This is accurate, generally. All states have independent presidential petition deadlines that are in July, August and September, except for a handful in June, and the deviant Texas deadline in May. The Texas deadline is almost certainly unconstitutional.
Bai’s generalization that the internet has made petitioning easier is questionable. Many states still have laws and regulations that make it impossible for supporters to download and print blank petition forms on their home computers and printers. Some states require that all signatures be gathered on state-printed forms. Other states permit photocopies but require that they be on legal size paper. No state except Utah permits signatures to be obtained electronically, and most New England states still have the cumbersome procedure that signatures must be submitted to each town clerk, and then gathered up by the petitioning candidate or group and then taken to the state elections office. Another big problem is that only a handful of states require that shopping malls permit petitioners on their property, and even the government-owned post office still forbids petitioning on its interior sidewalks (although the Postal Service regulation is being contested in court).
Salon editor Steve Kornacki has this reaction to Bai’s article. Kornacki criticizes Bai for implying that an independent presidential candidacy is something that has only been possible in the internet age, and points out that Ross Perot’s independent run in 1992 was before the internet age.
My online name is “Modnex” of “Modnex Intel.” Relative to Mr. Bai’s article in today’s NY Times, please visit my MySpace profile: http://www.myspace.com/kenkatsura
I have only recently begun to invite friends. In about 3.5 weeks, I do have well over 400, now. At Classmates.com, I was bringing in up to 400/week guestbook signatures. I ended up with well over 7,200 guestbook signatures (comparable to Facebook Friends) from throughout California – in less than six months.
My political platform: California Advanced Independents and “GoKatsura2016” (White House).
Come visit me . . . 🙂
Ken
I am confident Bloomberg will run for President.
Bloomberg would be a very, very strong candidate. But the electoral college math will make it very difficult for him. He needs to win a majority outright or it will 100% be a Republican president with the Republican House electing.
Bloomberg will need to run a near-perfect campaign to win 50% of the EC votes. I’d be interested in seeing a breakdown of which states he could conceivably win to get to 270. I am sure he has already done this analysis and figured that the deep red rural Western and Southern states would just be too narrow-minded and bigoted to cast their ballot for a rich, educated, common-sensical New England Jew.
But boy what a ride that would be. Sign me up here in Texas.
Phil Sawyer Says [in an earlier post]:
December 12th, 2010 at 10:23 am
Well, since it obviously is not too early to start talking seriously about the election for president in 2012, I will add another thought on this subject. I think that Jesse Ventura would be a much better (and much stronger) independent candidate for president than would Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
By the way, Christina, I do not think that Mayor Bloomberg will be a candidate for president in 2012. We go through this same thing every four years, it seems. Mr. Bloomberg always says that he is not going to run but certain people keep trying to get him to change his mind. I do not think that he wants to run against President Barack Obama and that he knows that he would come in a very distant third even if he wanted to do so. On the other hand, I think that Jesse Ventura would make a real strong race and might even “shock the world” again by winning the election.