Does Obama Surge Sink Bloomberg/?Chuck Hagel? 3rd Party / Independent Run?
Obama’s Surge Deflates Forum and Talk of a Bloomberg Run By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
NORMAN, Okla. — He arrived here for what seemed like it could be a big moment. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, eyeing a third-party presidential bid, joined Republican and Democratic elders at a forum to denounce the extreme partisanship of Washington and plot how to influence the campaign.
But even as the mayor gathered on Monday with the seasoned Washington hands on the campus of the University of Oklahoma, the surging presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama seemed to steal energy from the event and set off worry elsewhere among Mr. Bloomberg’s supporters
Mr. Obama has stressed that he wants to move beyond gridlocked politics and usher in an era of national unity. A key organizer of the effort to draft Mr. Bloomberg for a presidential run acknowledged in an interview on Monday that that Mr. Obama’s rise could be problematic.
“Obama is trying to reach out to independent voters, and that clearly would be the constituency that Mike Bloomberg would go after,” said Andrew MacRae, who heads the Washington chapter of Draft Mike Bloomberg for President 2008. “An Obama victory does not make it impossible, but it certainly makes it more difficult.”
The event was organized by former Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, with former Senator David L. Boren, Democrat of Oklahoma. In the days leading up the event here, just outside Oklahoma City, Mr. Boren suggested that he would encourage Mr. Bloomberg to run if the major party nominees failed to heed the call for bipartisanship.
But several leading participants took pains to say that they had no intention of abandoning their own parties in the election. Some even cast Mr. Obama’s success as evidence that the nation was yearning for the type of leadership they were offering.
“I believe he is demonstrating, in the support he is getting, that the American people share this concern about excessive partisanship,” said Bob Graham, a Democratic former senator from Florida, who said he would support a Democrat for president.
Gary Hart, a Democrat from Colorado who also served in the Senate, said he intended to endorse one of the Democratic presidential candidates in the next 48 hours, though he declined to identify the candidate.
“I am a Democrat, and I will endorse a Democratic president,” he said. “There are no independent candidates. I won’t endorse a Republican.”
The forum attracted students, faculty members and some who said they were intrigued by a third party approach. Still, they were also taking notice of the momentum Mr. Obama has been gaining since his victory in the Iowa caucuses last week.
“I wonder about all this,” said Tobi Padwick, 36, who drove to the event from Texas. Mr. Padwick said he believed the eventual nominees would be Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain, and “that sort of steals a lot of thunder, since they’re the two more moderate candidates.”
Despite public denials that he plans to run, aides close to Mr. Bloomberg have been laying the groundwork for a candidacy, should he declare one.
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