Before Mayor Bloomberg pulled up to Flushing Meadows Corona Park yesterday morning, a man wearing a gray suit and a rubber mask shaped like President Bush’s face arrived and stood silently beside a faux presidential aide, distributing a press release calling on the mayor to “Repeat his support for Bush.”

Striving to connect the city’s Republican mayor to the country’s Republican president, the New York State Democratic Committee has taken to sending representatives, dressed in Bush costumes, to Mr. Bloomberg’s events. Yesterday’s appearance was the third time the Bush mask made a showing at a Bloomberg event in the past week.

Mr. Bloomberg, who has alternated between supporting Mr. Bush and bashing his policy priorities, drove right by his Democratic heckler yesterday morning. When asked about the recent attempt to paint him as a friend of the Republican president, he lashed out.

“This is not a referendum about George Bush. This election is a referendum about Michael Bloomberg and this administration’s performance over the last four years and whether or not our policies should be continued for the next four years,” he said.

Pounding his fists on the mayoral podium, the mayor suggested that Democrats are sending the masked man to his events because they are intimidated by his record: “I can understand why if you’re running against this administration’s record, you might want to divert people’s attention because the fact of the matter is, we have brought crime down. We have improved the schools. We have built a record on affordable housing. We have brought the unemployment rate down. We have made the quality of life better in this city. We’ve gotten people to work together as not before.”

When a reporter asked the mayor if the Democrats were wrong to paint him as a Bush Republican, he quoted a Democrat, President Kennedy, and a Republican, Mayor La Guardia, as he espoused his personal theory of partisanship.

“I’m happy to support the president or anybody else when I agree with them, and I’m pleased to say my mind when I don’t agree, and I think that that’s incumbent upon everybody,” he said. “I think JFK once said that party loyalty demands too much. What you’ve really got to decide is what are your priorities. My priorities are doing the best jobs for all of the people of this city. La Guardia said there’s no Republican or Democratic way to run a city, pick up the garbage, whatever the phrase was. And I couldn’t agree more.”

While Mr. Bloomberg wooed the Republican convention to New York City in 2004 and said that he was supporting Mr. Bush for re-election, he has opposed the president on a number of prominent issues, including his Supreme Court nominee, Judge John Roberts Jr., his abortion policies, and his Iraq agenda.

The Democratic Party leadership did not buy the mayor’s refusal to proclaim his undying support for the president.

In a statement, the chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee, Herman “Denny” Farrell Jr., said, “The mayor ought to be honest with New Yorkers, repeat his endorsement of George Bush, and explain why he thinks Mr. Bush is a good president.”