Overdog Nips At Puppy Not Yet in the Fight

In trying to overcome perceptions that he is a tall, skinny political geek, Congressman Anthony Weiner has carefully constructed an image as someone who has dated models and is rugged enough to still be a hockey goalie.

Some see it as a form of overcompensating. But that word also seems to fit the attempts of Mayor Bloomberg's re-election campaign to deconstruct that image by wrapping it around Mr. Weiner's pencil neck, trying to portray him as a dilettante rather than a legislative workhorse, a guy who sponsors bills to help supermodels with visa problems and is too busy blocking slapshots in New York to get back to Washington for votes on really important stuff.

This doesn't quite compute on a couple of levels. The first one is basic: Mr. Weiner really is an energetic legislator with a consuming ambition but also a good command of complex issues, very much in the mold of his former boss, Chuck Schumer. The second one goes to the question of why Mr. Bloomberg's people are pursuing him with such a passion —including running a polling operation that began by asking city residents innocuous questions and then moved on to planting negative impressions about Mr. Weiner—when his mayoral campaign has been on hiatus for the past two months.

BOMBARDING THE GOALIE: Mayor Bloomberg's re-election campaign's role in generating negative stories about Anthony Weiner has spurred speculation as to whether the incumbent expects the Congressman to restart his dormant campaign and be his toughest potential foe or is merely indulging an old grudge.

A Money Missile Seeking Heat

The most-obvious answer to that question is that they're working him over because they can. As one government official put it, "They're spending a lot of money. You've gotta spend it on something, and you can't have a campaign if you don't have an opponent."

He was overlooking the fact that Mr. Bloomberg has an opponent, in Comptroller Bill Thompson, but wasn't doing it inadvertently. Mr. Thompson has been a bit slow out of the blocks, notwithstanding his getting the endorsement of former Mayor David Dinkins last week. And after the former Mayor explicitly stated he was not there to criticize Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Thompson implicitly took that same stance, rather than using the occasion to score some political points at the incumbent's expense.

Meanwhile, the Mayor has been racking up a steady stream of endorsements from influential black ministers, cutting deep into the heart of Mr. Thompson's potential voting base. It's had the effect of creating an impression that the campaign could be over before the Comptroller really gets started, with a sense of inevitability about a Bloomberg third term making it difficult for him to get the media and the voters to consider the areas in which the Mayor is vulnerable.

The Bloomberg commercials are not yet in saturation-bombing mode, but they are ubiquitous enough to make some veteran politicos wonder whether it isn't too much, too soon, risking voter fatigue before the electorate is fully focused on the campaign.

One such character dismissed the findings of a Marist College poll last week that showed the Mayor's favorable ratings rebounding from a precipitous drop in February, when just 52 percent of those surveyed gave him a thumbs-up. Last week's number was 59 percent—not yet back to the low-70s where he spent much of the past couple of years, but good enough to mark him as very tough to beat, particularly since, relatively speaking, he has not yet begun to spend.

Ratings May Not Equal Votes

But this guy, who spoke conditioned on anonymity, argued, "The polls say, 'Do you think the Mayor's doing a good job?' And they say, 'Yeah.' But they don't tell [pollsters] that they're actually going to vote for him."

Two of the matters on which the Mayor is most vulnerable are unrelated to his actual job performance. One is the manner in which he got the chance to run for a third term, using a clamor created by some investment bankers and the publishers of the city's three general-interest dailies to steamroll the City Council into going along with a scheme to bypass a referendum on an extension of a Term Limits Law that was created and then upheld by the voters twice during the 1990s. The other is a third consecutive mayoral campaign in which he has sought to overwhelm all potential opponents by spending them into oblivion, whether by dominating the airwaves or buying up much of the political consulting talent in the New York market.

Mr. Thompson thus far has not sought to hammer Mr. Bloomberg on either issue, and stated flatly, after a legal challenge to the term limits change failed, that he didn't plan to emphasize it in his campaign.

Congressman Weiner is not the kind of politician to pass up such opportunities, but he put himself on the sidelines in mid- March, saying he would re-evaluate whether to continue his campaign by the end of this month. It was generally believed that he had concluded there wasn't much percentage in having to run a tough primary race against Mr. Thompson that could risk alienating black voters who are a key constituency for any Democratic mayoral candidate, since defeating him would merely earn him a shot to be chewed up in Mr. Bloomberg's meatgrinder.

Rather than letting sleeping upstarts lie, the Bloomberg campaign has continued to pound Mr. Weiner, however, most recently through a New York Post story that he and more than a few others are convinced got its wings from mayoral operatives. It accused him of ducking Congressional votes in order to play hockey.

A Whiner or a Street-Fighter?

When Mr. Weiner complained in last week's Times article about the "surreal" nature of what he said were orchestrated attacks—with the Post as the primary off-payroll conduit— there were those who said it seemed like he was trying to replace the first "e" in his last name with an "h." On the other hand, there's a certain instinct among kids who grew up in Brooklyn to fight back when a rich kid who has everything going for him nonetheless feels a need to bait and deride those around him for their alleged deficiencies.

It has sometimes seemed that Mr. Bloomberg took such a strong dislike to Mr. Weiner during the campaign four years ago because he resented being challenged aggressively by someone with too much attitude for a guy who still hadn't made his first billion. He may be responding in kind now, but, as one adviser to Mr. Weiner noted, it is more likely than not to get the Congressman to restart his engines rather than pulling the plug.

It's possible that the Bloomberg campaign has continued whacking Mr. Weiner because it believes he is likely to rejoin the race due to two factors concerning Mr. Thompson.

Will Pension Mess Hurt Him?

One is the inability of the Comptroller so far to mount a serious challenge to the Mayor; the other concerns State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's expanding investigation into public pension fund investments.

It's tough to fault Mr. Thompson for not knowing that Hank Morris—the longtime political consultant to former City and State Comptroller Alan Hevesi who's under indictment for al- leged state pension fund improprieties— also got a piece of the action from city pension investments with the Quadrangle Group. Quadrangle didn't list Mr. Morris as its placement agent after he was contacted by one of the group's principals, Steve Rattner, in response to a strong hint from someone then on Mr. Thompson's staff. Mr. Thompson has denied any knowledge of what transpired, and one of the more intriguing questions about it is why Mr. Rattner, a friend and key political supporter of Mr. Bloomberg's, didn't complain to the Mayor if he believed he was being improperly pressured to hire a middleman.

But while Mr. Morris is the mostegregious example of someone profiting from his political connections, he is not alone. The Village Voice's Tom Robbins over the past couple of weeks has explored cases where persons with ties to Mr. Thompson—Bill Howell, Mayor Koch's former representative at the old Board of Estimate, and Jack Jordan, the ex-head of the nowdefunct Housing Police Benevolent Association—wound up with lucrative placement fees.

A $3-Million Cut

Mr. Howell, who became friendly with Mr. Thompson when the latter gentleman, while Deputy Brooklyn Borough President, represented his boss Howie Golden at the Estimate Board, received at least $3 million as placement agent on a $150-million investment by the city pension funds in Northern Ireland last year, Mr. Robbins reported.

And Mr. Jordan, who was convicted of perjury a decade ago for lying to a Federal grand jury about a scheme to defraud the Campaign Finance Board by his former union lawyer, Richie Hartman, and ex-Transit PBA President Ron Reale, has received between $1.25 million and $3 million in fees as the placement agent for three deals involving city pension investments.

The Comptroller acknowledged to Mr. Robbins that he was friendly with Mr. Howell but insisted he was "not one of my best friends," and denied having "a close relationship" with Mr. Jordan.

Those transactions have not received much coverage outside of the Voice, but Mr. Cuomo's probe is continuing and there could be an expanded list of people raking in the gravy based on political connections if recent revelations are any barometer.

A Distraction He Can't Afford

There's no indication yet that Mr. Thompson did anything improper, unlike the state case, where so many people with ties to Mr. Hevesi have been implicated that it's hard to imagine he wasn't aware of what was going on. But further disclosures of placement fees going to the politically wired would be an unwelcome distraction to Mr. Thompson's campaign at a time when he absolutely can't afford it.

Which might account for the Bloomberg campaign's assaults on a guy who for the moment doesn't seem like he's running. If the Mayor's men are convinced that the pension stuff could eventually submerge a Thompson campaign that is now just treading water, then Mr. Weiner looms as the one potentially dangerous November opponent for Mr. Bloomberg.

It could be they're outsmarting themselves by riling up someone who might otherwise have been content to wait until 2013—even without a grueling primary fight, taking on an incumbent with a generally good record and a bankroll that won't quit isn't exactly an obvious political choice.

The Yankee Way

But maybe, like the New York Yankees, the Bloomberg camp figures any miscalculations it makes can be overcome by outspending the competition.

Of course, that philosophy hasn't worked so well for the Bronx Bombers for the past eight years. And where the team's success this year probably won't be affected by the unhappiness of many long-time ticket-holders who got screwed in the changeover to a new stadium, Mr. Bloomberg is in an arena where likeability sometimes is more important than performance.