Actually, the joke’s on us. Even as newspaper fortunes sank in recent years, Bloomberg diligently courted media barons like Zuckerman, Murdoch, and Sulzberger, who he understood could make his life difficult if they so chose. Minus their support, as Joyce Purnick’s new Bloomberg biography proves, he would have never risked his end run around term limits. But he knew he had little to fear. As Purnick’s book also tells us, even his weekend disappearing act to go to his mansion in Bermuda has gone unchallenged.

“He does his radio show Friday morning,” a former aide told her. “At 11:05, the latest, he’s in his car. At 11:30 he is at the airport. His plane is in the air at 11:40, he’s in Bermuda at 2:10. He’s on the golf course by 2:30. . . . Almost every weekend, spring and fall.”

There’s a photo op that’s been even more closely guarded than military caskets arriving at Dover Air Force Base: Mayor Mike, golf bags over his shoulder, striding across the tarmac toward Air Bloomberg.

But of course all that golfing had a purpose — like puff pieces about the mayor’s golf score. And then there are the I [heart] NY golf balls. And of course the mayor’s own vision of immigration reform . . .

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

And a number of political analysts say that a predicted record-low turnout next Tuesday may jeopardize Mr. Bloomberg’s projected double-digit victory margin and even deliver him a third term with the lowest total vote received by a New York City mayor in nearly a century.

. . .

Mr. Bloomberg won in 2001 with 744,000 votes. He won a second term four years later with 753,000 of the 1.3 million cast. If as few as 20 percent of eligible voters turn out and Mr. Bloomberg wins even by a 10-percentage-point landslide, he would be re-elected with fewer than 500,000 votes — the lowest total since John F. Hylan’s in 1917.

That, by the way, was before women were allowed to vote and when the city’s population was smaller by nearly three million.

Which is all funny, in a ha-ha funny kind of way, as Clyde Haberman reports:

Buoyed by the polls and his own astonishing campaign spending, Mr. Bloomberg seems confident that four more years at City Hall are in the bag for him. Monday morning, he spoke about the New York that he envisioned in 2013, when his third term would end. This was in a speech to students attending New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service.

He was pleased, he told them, to speak at a school named for “a distinguished three-term mayor.”

That produced thin laughter. Maybe the students had the Monday morning blahs. Or maybe they simply didn’t think it was funny.

“I thought I’d get a better laugh than that,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “It’s not easy to do three-term jokes, folks.”

There’s a reason for that.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Following the Yankees’ clinching win over the Los Angeles Angels, the Fox cameras were trained on the podium, as various presentations were made and interviews conducted. And just to the right, Mayor Bloomberg held his position on the podium, so long that it almost seemed awkward.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

The Thompson campaign seems to think [the term limit extension issue is salient for voters], and they’re looking at the recent mayor’s race in Albuquerque, where the mayor, Martin Chavez, was defeated after he successfully sued to throw out the law barring him from seeking another term.

. . .

Three days after Chavez’s defeat, a reporter asked Bloomberg if he was afraid the same thing would happen to him. Bloomberg, standing in his campaign headquarters with the term-limited mayor of Miami, Manny Diaz, said he wasn’t, because “the politics there are different than the politics here.”

Some differences:

In Albuquerque, there were three candidates.

In Albuquerque, the third candidate in the race was a Democrat, like the incumbent. One siphoned votes from the other while the Republican candidate, Berry, consolidated his base. Also, both Berry and the other challenger, Romero, focused their attacks on Chavez.

In Albuquerque, the election was nonpartisan.

And most notably, in Albuquerque, all the candidates participated in a public financing program that capped their spending.

That last difference — spending — explains the absurdity of Bloomberg arguing that it “costs a lot of money to get a message out” — this despite the fact that he has had eight years to craft said message, and that he has the best name recognition of any other mayor in America.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

New York City’s campaign finance system is one of the best in the country. He does everyone a disservice by not complying with the system’s limits on spending.

Elsewhere on the opinion page, Bob Herbert calls the mayor’s race baiting a sign of vulnerability:

That the mayor is now willing to lock his principles in a safe deposit box and start riding the broomstick of ethnic politics suggests that he’s worried about the outcome of his race against Mr. Thompson . . .

*Everyone except El Diario, that is. And the Amsterdam News. Good for them. Also, do you wonder why the Times chose to run this endorsement on Saturday?

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Michael R. Bloomberg, the Wall Street mogul whose fortune catapulted him into New York’s City Hall, has set another staggering financial record: He has now spent more of his own money than any other individual in United States history in the pursuit of public office.

Newly released campaign records show the mayor, as of Friday, had spent $85 million on his latest re-election campaign, and is on pace to spend between $110 million and $140 million before the election on Nov. 3.

That means Mr. Bloomberg, in his three bids for mayor, will have easily burned through more than $250 million — the equivalent of what Warner Brothers spent on the latest Harry Potter movie.

The sum easily surpasses what other titans of business have spent to seek state or federal office. New Jersey’s Jon S. Corzine has plunked down a total of $130 million in two races for governor and one for United States Senate. Steve Forbes poured $114 million into his two bids for president. And Ross Perot spent $65 million in his quest for the White House in 1992 and $10 million four years later.

. . .

He has spent at least 14 times what his Democratic rival in the race, William C. Thompson Jr., has: $6 million.

The heady display of overwhelming force also provokes adulation from supporters and admirers:

The Sanitation Department reported yesterday that Thompson’s campaign is facing a hefty $125,775 bill for plastering city property with 1,677 illegal campaign posters.

. . .

In contrast to Thompson, Bloomberg’s campaign has been cited for 70 violations.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

On Oct. 11, Bloomberg parachuted (not literally) into Morris Park for a brief march in the annual Columbus Day Parade. Thompson didn’t make it. Before the mayor jumped back into his black SUV, he was heckled by about a dozen protesters (and one dog) upset with the city’s opening (without community notification) of several new homeless shelters in the borough, according to reporter David Greene.

John Bonizio, of the Westchester Square Merchants Association, called Bloomberg a “traitor,” adding, “His coming up to this middle class neighborhood to march in a parade for votes is disrespecting us, with what he’s getting ready to do to this neighborhood.”

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Take an endorsement of the mayor issued this week by Citizens Union, often described as a good-government group, as if there were bad-government groups. (Hang on, there is one. We almost forgot about Albany.)

A news release from the Bloomberg campaign announcing the endorsement cited its praise of mayoral actions on crime, education, public health and technological innovation.

Somehow, it omitted other noteworthy points. Like the group’s disapproval of the billionaire mayor’s rewriting of the term limits law to turn himself into Bloomberg L.P.: Long Playing. Like the displeasure with his “excessive” — an adjective that some others have used is “obscene” — campaign spending.

The cherry-picking would do a Broadway press agent proud.

Which made me think — all of us should selectively quote from those Soviet-like editorial endorsements that have been rolling out lately. Today, for example, there’s the Post:

No doubt, some New Yorkers are angry about how Mayor Mike used his considerable resources to having them set aside to allow him to run again. It was a characteristic display of Bloombergian hubris, and we suspect that it will cost him on Election Day.

It’s all much better this way! Now we can make believe that there’s still sanity left at the editorial boards across the city.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

*Don’t not click through to his column; there’s a provocative claim of racial coding on the part of Bloomberg with his recent Detroit warning.

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

Even if the cause was unseemly, the execution of the political strategy to rewrite the law was staggeringly impressive, enlisting Bloomberg’s moneyed friends and the friends he’s made with his money and displaying an impressive eye for detail. An ethnically diverse cast of average citizens appeared in the front row at the council hearings, clutching preprinted signs reading democrats for choices. Bloomberg campaign aides like Patrick Brennan were suddenly “volunteering” their time to round up supporters to pass the needed City Council bill extending term limits. When Linda Gibbs, the mayor’s head of Health and Human Services, lobbied an official at a social-services group to make calls to council members, there didn’t seem to be much choice. The mayor’s operatives coaxed a wide range of recipients of his charitable donations to testify, but most were smart enough that they didn’t need an invitation. The Public Art Fund has received at least $500,000 from Bloomberg; its head, Susan Freedman, spoke enthusiastically on the mayor’s behalf — and, she says, with a clear conscience because of Bloomberg’s belief in the importance of the arts. “Do you think you would need to twist my arm to have me want this kind of leadership continue?” she said afterward.

The parade of witnesses included Mario Cuomo, the former governor, who is now of counsel to Willkie Farr & Gallagher, the firm that is defending Bloomberg L.P. against sexual-discrimination lawsuits and that has as one of its top partners Richard DeScherer, Bloomberg’s lawyer. Geoffrey Canada, who runs the Harlem Children’s Zone, spoke of his worry for New York’s most vulnerable during the downturn. He didn’t mention that his organization has city contracts worth millions of dollars and has received more than $500,000 in private money from Bloomberg.

“It’s a legitimate question, to ask about people being compromised,” Canada says. “But everybody knows we get money from the city! We have since the seventies. I wouldn’t turn down money from anyone who wants to support our programs. But is my vote for sale? Absolutely not. I’m very comfortable with the real reasons I’m supporting Bloomberg — his attention to education, the reduction in crime without the rancor of the Giuliani years, and his fairness in spreading the budget pain.”

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.