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Gillibrand Still Trying to Win Over Bloomberg

By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ and MICHAEL BARBARO, Published: March 12, 2010

WASHINGTON — He gripes about her in private conversations with his aides and her colleagues on Capitol Hill. He has yet to take up her invitation to sit down for dinner. And his political team is constantly shopping for potential candidates to oust her.

As New York experiences a tumultuous election season, one question is captivating political insiders: Why does Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg so dislike Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand?

It is more than a passing concern for Ms. Gillibrand, who is still working to win over New York voters, especially downstate. The mayor’s top political advisers, with Mr. Bloomberg’s tacit support, worked behind the scenes to assist her biggest potential Democratic rival, Harold E. Ford Jr., as he considered challenging her in the Democratic primary.

If that were not provocative enough, the mayor met with one possible Republican opponent, the billionaire Mortimer B. Zuckerman, to discuss his running, and his top political strategist sat down with another, Dan Senor, to talk about his potential campaign.

After Mr. Ford and Mr. Zuckerman decided not to run, Mr. Bloomberg — as if to taunt Ms. Gillibrand — declared that they both could probably have beaten her.

Such behavior has puzzled Ms. Gillibrand and outraged some prominent Democrats. “I don’t get it,” Ms. Gillibrand said in a recent interview, when asked about the efforts of the Bloomberg team on behalf of her challengers.

Those who know both the mayor and the senator say there is a personal dimension to Mr. Bloomberg’s unhappiness with Ms. Gillibrand, likening the two to oil and water: Ms. Gillibrand, 43, is a relentless — and often successful — striver, eager to please and highly solicitous of potential supporters. She grew up in a political family and learned old-school campaigning early on, from her grandmother, a Democratic leader in the area.

Mr. Bloomberg, 68, can be chilly and dismissive, professes a disdain for traditional politics and favors directness over diplomacy.

The friction between them can be traced, in part, to their first meeting early last year, shortly after Gov. David A. Paterson appointed Ms. Gillibrand to fill the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Continues @ The New York Times

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