Bloomberg Could Win, Experts Say

While many may view as slim Mayor Bloomberg's chances of winning the presidency, some pollsters and political strategists are saying he can do it if a number of conditions are met.

Political strategist Robert Shrum said that while the conventional wisdom is that Mr. Bloomberg cannot win enough states, the mayor has certain advantages, such as needing only 37% or 38% of the popular vote in states where a majority disagree with his pro-gun control stance to win the electoral votes in a three-way race.

A former communications director for Senator McCain, Daniel Schnur, concurred that in some states such as Ohio and Michigan where Mr. Bloomberg might not get 50%, he could get the requisite 35%.

Mr. Shrum said the old presidential race playbook must be tossed out if there is a viable third-party candidate. Although some pundits have compared Mr. Bloomberg to Ross Perot, who garnered no electoral votes, Mr. Shrum said Mr. Perot was so quirky that he basically ruled himself out "and still got 19%" of the popular vote.

A scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Norman Ornstein, said Mr. Perot at one point early on pulled equal to the two major candidates.

Mr. Schnur said Mr. Bloomberg could put together a "very plausible electoral strategy" and that the mayor's logical base of support would be both coasts and states around the Great Lakes. He also said Mr. Bloomberg would be competitive if both parties nominate candidates at the more extreme ends of the political spectrum, such as a race with Governor Romney or Senator Thompson on the Republican side and senators Obama or Edwards on the Democratic ticket.

Mr. Ornstein said that if the election was thrown into the House and Mr. Bloomberg had a plurality, delegations from the states he won would likely support him.

Fred Siegel, a professor at Cooper Union, said Mr. Bloomberg would need to carry the entire Northeast and the entire West Coast, and would likely need Florida. If Mr. Bloomberg won that state, Mr. Ornstein said, he would not need to win the rest of the South.

"Let's throw in Wisconsin," Mr. Siegel said, and Minnesota, with its history of interest in third party candidates. If one adds "outer reaches" such as Illinois, Colorado, and Iowa, he is almost within reach of a majority.

A former Republican congressman of Oklahoma, Mickey Edwards, said Mr. Bloomberg could win Minnesota or Iowa, but would have a more difficult time in Illinois or Michigan, which have not shown an inclination to look outside the party. He said with his money for television advertisements, his message "was not going to get washed out."

Mr. Siegel said that although independent voters could not be qualified as a single lump, Mr. Bloomberg would attract swing voters, which is potentially a much larger group than independent voters.

Mr. Bloomberg could afford to first wait to see who the other nominees are in February before pursuing the ballot access process, which is "extremely Byzantine," a lecturer at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, David King, said. He said Mr. Bloomberg could take over a pre-existing party or more likely join the "Unity08" bipartisan ticket, designed for a pragmatic centrist such as the mayor.

Mr. Schnur said ballot access is a matter of money and manpower, and with Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire, "money can buy manpower." The editor of Ballot Access News, Richard Winger, concurred that it is not as difficult as often claimed to get on ballots. He said the Libertarian Party got its candidate on all 50 ballots four times. He said that Mr. Bloomberg might prefer Unity08 to do the legwork, so he can appear diffident about seeking the presidency.

A professor at Harvard's Kennedy School, Herman Leonard, said this perhaps is the year when everyone is truly tired of party and partisan politics. From a structural perspective, though, the Bloomberg candidacy faces a system that focuses on main party candidates and a voting system that systematically assigns more weight to small, rural states, he said. Nevertheless, he said: "None of this implies that it cannot be done."

Political consultant Henry Sheinkopf said the good news for Mr. Bloomberg is that neither of the main parties is doing particularly well. A recent Gallup poll shows confidence in Congress is at all-time low, at 14%.

Mr. Ornstein likewise said the disaffection Americans are feeling was a factor in Mr. Bloomberg's favor. "They are not happy with the economy, war, the president, politics, or Congress," he said, adding that for Mr. Bloomberg to win, the two major party candidates would have to leave Americans even less happy.

Mr. Siegel said there is no precedent for a candidate who might be willing to spend a half a billion dollars. "This is all uncharted territory," Mr. Sheinkopf said, adding that the big issue is whether Mr. Bloomberg can attract voters in the Midwest, where national elections are won or lost, by focusing on issues such as jobs and the economy.

The director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, Maurice Carroll, said this is an "apolitical era" and Mr. Bloomberg's big claim is clearly "competence," he said. But Mr. Carroll cautioned that the New York mayor's office has "not exactly been a launching pad" for higher office.

Mr. Siegel said that a Bloomberg candidacy could make an already unpredictable political situation even more fluid. "At the very least," Mr. Siegel said, "He can be the straw that stirs the drink."

Mr. King said there is a precedent: The only electorally successful third party win was by the Republicans, in 1856.