The Black/Bloomberg Cold War

It's been a weird week in the Cathie Black Chronicles.

First, the NY Times reported that Cathie Black was NOT Mayor Bloomberg's first choice to replace Joel Klein as NYC schools chancellor - Harlem Children's Zone founder Geoffrey Canada was.

Dunno if the story is true, but there it is, in plain Internets newsprint.

The same article also alludes that Bloomberg may have asked Michelle Rhee if she wanted the job.

Again, dunno if it is true, but there it is, in plain Internets newsprint.

So who fed that story to the reporter who put it into plain Internets newsprint and what was the rationale behind it?

The Times says the story came from "two people with direct knowledge of the discussions." between Bloomberg and Canada.

Who could those two people be?

At first, I suspected it was For Profit Geoffrey Canada, a man desperately in need of attention and publicity who likes to insert himself into as many 60 Minutes/Anderson Cooper aggrandizing spots as possible.

But what would Canada's rationale be for feeding that story to the press?

He likes attention, yes, but I bet he doesn't want any attention that brings hostility from Mayor Bloomberg, so I'm guessing he wouldn't have leaked that story to the Times if Bloomberg didn't want it leaked.

For Profit Geoffrey's mother didn't raise no fools and he knows who helps butter his education reform bagel.

So let's assume Canada, or somebody very close to Canada, is one of the sources for the story and that the story was leaked with Bloomberg's approval.

Who was the second source?

Somebody in a comment thread on another blogpost here at Perdido Street School suggested Natalie Ravitz, the NYCDOE spokesperson, but I don't think that it could be her.

She's the DOE propaganda-meister, but she doesn't have the mayor's ear the way more senior advisers in the Bloomberg administration do, so I just don't think it was her.

I think the second source had to be somebody close to Bloomberg who has the job to clean up potential or actual messes.

That would be Bloomberg's Director of Communications, Howard Wolfson.

He already was seen meeting Cathie Black at Bloomberg LP headquarters back on Monday November 15 as the press chased her (quite literally) for an interview.

So it's not like he hasn't been put on the Black case already.

And Wolfson definitely has the clean-up job in the Bloomberg administration - as a sleazy, unethical hack, that's ALWAYS been his role in politics.

So I think the second source was Wolfson (though Bloomberg adviser Stu Loesser is also a good choice for the leak source.)

Regardless of the actual Bloomberg mouthpiece who fed the story to the Times, the point is that Bloomberg WANTED the story fed to them.

Now comes the important question: why?

Because the result of the Times story was to undercut Bloomberg's new schools chancellor and put her on the defensive.

She had to respond to the story during a FOX 5 interview on Friday where she was asked by the FOX 5 host was "it your responsibility to point out to Mayor Bloomberg that you lack certain things in your resume that could become an issue going forward, the lack of an advanced degree, not having set foot in a classroom as a professional?"

The host asked more than once if she knew if Bloomberg knew that she lacked an advanced degree as the post requires.

She responded

“I don’t know that for a fact,” Ms. Black said. “I assume he had done his homework — as he should have.”

Which is true - it wasn't HER job or responsibility to make the potential new boss aware of the missing pieces in her resume.

She was protecting herself by pointing out that it was BLOOMBERG'S job to check her qualifications before he hired her, not hers.

Nonetheless, it is interesting that even the FOX 5 Murdoch people are putting her on the defensive on that issue.

I suspect that lack of an advanced degree is what lies at the heart of the Times/Canada story on Friday and the seeming cold war going on between Black and Bloomberg.

Perhaps the mayor has heard from lawyers that the lawsuits filed against Black asking to have her state waiver revoked because she is lacking an advanced degree as required by law have a lot of merit and a judge may find against the chancellor and mayor. Maybe he's laying the groundwork to move on from her once the court decisions come down.

Perhaps Bloomberg has noticed that Black's track record since she was announced as chancellor has been awful - she has stuck her foot into her mouth nearly every time she has opened it to the press. She seems to be stuck in her own sheltered, privileged world where she can say things like she has been "bowled over" by the cleanliness of the schools she has visited (as if she expected them to take her to schools with graffiti, rats, mice and asbestos strewn all over the halls?) or she isn't sure if she would let her own kids attend a public school or, well, you can read the rest of the foot in mouth moments in this post here. The point is, she has been a public relations disaster from the beginning and she doesn't help herself with the stupid things she says.

Or perhaps Bloomberg really does think it was her responsibility to point out the lack of advanced degree and he's pissed off at her and lashing out through leaked stories that put her on the defensive.

Or maybe he's just arrogant, he never thought that people would raise a stink about her lack of qualifications, let alone sue in court to have her state waiver revoked, and now he's floundering trying to figure out what to do.

Regardless, I think the bloom is totally off the Black/Bloomberg relationship already, he is worried that she will become a constant liability that he will eventually have to dump from the DOE anyway, so he's readying the lifeboat now.

Which is why he put in phone calls to Geoffrey and Howard and told them what to do.