Michael Bloomberg, being the mayor and all, is all over the news today, but even more than your average Monday thanks to a massive, legacy-weighing feature in The New Yorker. Along with Bloomberg’s almost-but-not-quite empathetic quotes on stop-and-frisk, reporter Ken Auletta writes of the outgoing mayor’s ambivalence about his would-be successors and drops this juicy tidbit: “Bloomberg secretly financed a poll by his own longtime pollster, Douglas Schoen, to help convince [NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly] that he could win, but Kelly declined.” Asked this morning about the article at a law-enforcement press conference trumpeting a huge gun bust, however, Bloomberg balked in his trademark crotchety fashion.
“What New Yorker report?” asked Bloomberg, while standing next to Kelly. “There’s a lot of reports in the news.”
Even though the floor had been opened to “off-topic questions,” the mayor snapped, “I don’t know where that came from,” in reference to news of the Kelly poll. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said to a second curious reporter. “We’re here to talk about guns,” he added. “Let’s get serious.”
