RBE,
Our Mayor is really very good at managing the media coverage of his administration. There are only a handful of people independent enough and brave enough to challenge him. Even if the press is sympathetic or just open to hearing from his critics, policy debates aren't easy to sell to editors. So the mayor or chancellor are portrayed as doing something while the critics are mere naysayers.
But there is a limit to what even he can do. If he does become an actual candidate for something, the mayor's record and the attacks on it become news again. And there are some big holes there. Yes, test scores are up in the four years of mayoral control but they were up more in the four years prior. No, Fair Student Funding does not shift funds from wealthy to poor communities as the mayor routinely claims. And no, parents did not choose "enrichment programs" over class size, etc, etc.
Patrick
No one is taking seriously the possibility of a Bloomberg run. If that changes, someone in opposition research will get that stuff and start passing it out to interested reporters.
But until then, Mitt Romney's opposition researcher is worried about Giuliani. Giuliani just hopes the stuff will go away. Hillary wonders how to beat Obama, but leave him powerful enough to put their ticket over the top in the general -- and both of them are looking at Edwards the same way.
Bloomberg's warts aren't important until he gets the role of the witch.
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