Bloomberg's Endorsement Seen As "Kiss Of Death"

Yes, that phrase actually gets used in today's Times article on why not one candidate running for mayor has sought Bloomberg's endorsement  - not even the Republicans.

One GOP candidate took a poll with Republican voters and found that two-thirds had a negative view of Bloomberg.

In the Democratic Primary, de Blasio has surged to the head of the pack running an anti-Bloomberg-themed campaign:

It is a humbling and alien experience for the relatively popular mogul turned mayor, who is unpracticed in humility: in the race to lead a post-Bloomberg New York City, there is profound wariness of being viewed as, well, too much like Mr. Bloomberg. 

The arms-length approach to the powerful mayor demonstrates how thoroughly the campaign has been reframed by the fiery, anti-Bloomberg message and rhetoric of a single candidate — Mr. de Blasio, the city’s public advocate. 

Throughout the summer, Mr. de Blasio has portrayed the current administration, and its allies, as protectors of an unacceptable status quo that coddles the rich and overlooks the poor, elevates Manhattan and ignores its neighboring boroughs. In the process, Mr. de Blasio has forced his rivals to recalibrate how they talk about Mr. Bloomberg and the future of New York.   

“He has shown that you can succeed by complaining about Bloomberg,” said Kenneth Sherrill, a professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College in Manhattan. “That was something that most candidates were afraid to do.” 

Now that the critique of the Bloomberg era has become so central to Mr. de Blasio’s surging candidacy, Mr. Sherrill said, rival campaigns are struggling to match it. “They are all playing catch-up — and it’s obvious.”

Quinn in particular wants nothin to do with Bloomberg or his once-coveted, now-debased endorsement:

Nowhere is the Bloomberg Question more freighted than inside the Quinn campaign, which has simultaneously sought to play up and soft-pedal her close ties to the mayor as speaker of the City Council, depending on the issue. A frequent ally of Mr. Bloomberg, Ms. Quinn ensured passage of legislation allowing him to run for a third term, and repeatedly shepherded his highest priorities through a once-fractious Council. 

 

But a mayoral endorsement of her, once treated as a foregone conclusion, now might cement her image among skeptical Democrats as the Fourth Term of Bloomberg — “the kiss of death,” Mr. Sherrill said. 

Ironic, isn't it, how the mayor said earlier this year that the UFT's endorsement of a candidate was the "kiss of death" (and given their track record in mayoral endorsements, he had a point), and yet now his endorsement is also seen as the "kiss of death" in both the Republican and Democratic party primaries?