In Tough Times It Is Probably Good To Have More Choices . . .

Case in point:

One of the casualties of Michael Bloomberg’s move to run for a third term, it seems, is next year’s Democratic primary.

Yes, it’s still 11 months away, and the mayor has only just finished announcing his intention to overturn term limits, but the prospect of Mr. Bloomberg — and his billions of dollars — running again may have ended the contest before it even took shape.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a Bloomberg ally who was the favorite of much of the city’s business establishment, reacted immediately by announcing that she would abandon a planned run if the mayor went for reelection.

City Comptroller Bill Thompson, the only minority candidate in the prospective Democratic field, says that he’s running, but doesn’t sound incredibly convincing. For now, his game plan consists entirely of trying to block the mayor from running by casting public doubt on the idea of changing term limits without a referendum.

. . .

“No one believes Thompson stays in,” said George Arzt, a Democratic consultant. (Mr. Arzt, a former City Hall bureau chief for the New York Post and aide to Mayor Ed Koch, said that he had “spoken with” more than one potential mayoral campaign, but that he won’t work for any of them against Mr. Bloomberg if the mayor runs.)

. . .

“People do believe that, at least initially, Weiner will be in there, but if he sees he’s going to get crushed that he would back out, rather than suffer two different losses in two different elections,” said Mr. Arzt, referring to Mr. Weiner’s run for mayor in 2005 in which he narrowly missed making a runoff against the eventual Democratic nominee, Fernando Ferrer.

Consultant Jerry Skurnik was more hopeful about the chances of having some sort of primary contest, but only slightly: “The odds are two of the three will run, and that we’ll have a primary,” said Mr. Skurnik, referring to Mr. Thompson, Mr. Weiner and Mr. Avella. “But it’s possible that we won’t have a primary — that only one of them will run. I don’t know.”

Of course, there’s one more scenario — perhaps the least appealing of all for the Democrats: that Bloomberg, instead of destroying their primary, joins it.

Mr. Arzt said that an employee in his consulting firm already received a call as part of a telephone survey asking whether the employee would support Mr. Bloomberg if he ran as a Democrat in next year’s primary.