Bloomberg Finds He Can't Endorse Lhota

The newspapers are reporting that Bloomberg said today that he has decided not to endorse a candidate in this year's mayoral election.

The reality is, he can't endorse a candidate in this year's mayoral election.

Poll after poll shows that people are ready to move on from Bloomberg.

While his approval rating is right around 50% and he does not conjure up the same animosity that Giuliani did, he also does garner much warmth from people these days.

After 12 years, many New Yorkers are sick of their imperious billionaire mayor and his soda bans, his trans-fat decrees, his school policies, and the like.

That fact became clear as the campaign went on and de Blasio, the anti-Bloomberg, started to surge, and the other candidates in the Democratic primary were forced to pivot from their moderate positions and begin to criticize Bloomberg more.

While the GOP primary certainly did not turn anti-Bloomberg the way the Democratic primary did, it is no longer clear that a Bloomberg endorsement of Lhota would help the Lhota campaign - not after the New York Magazine article where Bloomberg called de Blasio a "racist" for using his biracial kids and his black wife in his campaign ads.

Bloomberg endorses Lhota, Lhota owns those comments.

So Lhota doesn't really want Bloomberg's endorsement.

He's got enough trouble trying to live down the Giuliani association (Lhota worked for Rudy in the 1990's), he doesn't want to have to explain away Bloomberg's inexplicable "de Blasio is a racist" comments.

So Bloomberg, a man with so fragile an ego that he puts his name in big letters on everything he owns (BLOOMBERG!!!!), now must suffer the humilaition that nobody wants his endorsement this election season after 12 years running this city, that not only would his endorsement of Quinn hurt her in the Democratic primary, but an endorsement of Lhota in the general might hurt him too.

This humiliation can't make Mike Bloomberg happy.

He likes to think he is the most indispensable person in the room, the city, the state, nation.

This is guy that looks pained when he has to stand next to the governor or the president and make believe like he defers to them on the power chart.

And here is, unwanted for an endorsement, unloved by the New York City electorate, with most people simply ready to move on from the Bloomberg Years and the Bloomberg policies.