Mayor Michael Bloomberg just produced 70,000 new New Yorkers after winning a successful appeal of U.S. Census Bureau population estimates. That's 70,000 new people who have no idea who Alan Hevesi is. Quite a feat. But Bloomberg isn't just working his strange magic locally, he's spell-casting throughout the entire region. Crain's Insider (no link — it's for insiders) reports that the Gandalf of Fifth Avenue is dispatching an important helper hobbit, Korrine Kubena, a director of government affairs, to the distant kingdom of Connecticut, where she will aid a less able sorcerer, Joe Lieberman.

Bloomberg has been building IndePubliCrat synergy all over the place: in California, where Arnold Schwarzenegger got so gushy he called him "my soul mate," and now with embattled Joe, whom he formally endorsed in August. Bloomberg will hold a fund-raiser for the Connecticut senator at his townhouse on November 1, and he'll appear at a Chicago event with Lieberman's wife, Hadassah, on October 25. Yesterday, Lieberman's opponent, rich-but-not-Bloomberg-rich antiwar candidate and Democratic primary winner Ned Lamont, dumped $500,000 of his own money into his campaign war chest.

The well-funded Lieberman is increasingly drawing support from Republicans, sparking criticism from the left that he's a little more than a cheerful lapdog for Bush-Cheney. On Tuesday, he worked the sidewalks of Fairfield, Connecticut, with former mayor Ed Koch, who while not technically a Republican hasn't been recognizable as a Democrat for about a quarter century. Last Thursday in Washington, Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute and President Bush's college roommate, co-sponsored a Lieberman fund-raising luncheon. Now there is speculation that Lieberman may caucus with the Republicans if he wins reelection. Mayor Mike may be dabbling in the black arts.