Richard Parsons

According to Reuters, Richard Parsons, Time Warner's chairman, is planning to step down in 2009. "This is my last shot at this," Parsons is quoted as saying during a shareholders meeting. "I will be the outgoing chairman after this year, probably."

Get ready for journalists to start another round of the "Richard Parsons, future New York City mayoral candidate" meme.

Flashback: AOL-Time Warner's New Chief, Richard Parsons, Makes His Social Debut, December 23, 2001.

The Times of London reported today that Richard Parsons, the CEO of Time Warner Inc., could step down as early as next week, to be replaced by Time Warner president Jeff Bewkes.

Mr Bewkes has long been since as Mr. Parsons' heir apparent, and is considered more likely to shake up the company by, for instance, selling off the struggling AOL, which recently announced plans to lay off aorund 2000 employees.

Time Warner has denied the report, calling it "a rumor". We've put our own call in to the media conglomerate, and will update if we hear anything.

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Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión thinks a lot about the year 2009.    read more »

The refusal by Time Warner boss Dick Parsons to rule out a mayoral run this week turned out to have been a brilliant piece of public relations, leading to a spate of respectful media speculation and, today, to this enthusiastic editorial in the New York Post.

"Over the last five years, one media magnate-turned-politician - Michael Bloomberg - has demonstrated that a businessman can do a pretty good job running the city.

"And Parsons would, arguably, be even more qualified to be mayor than Bloomberg was in 2001."

It ends with the standard catch phrase for all political draft movements: "Run, Dick, Run."

But is any of it real?

This morning, in reponse to an interview request to Parson's office, here's what Time Warner corporate communications director Keith Cocozza told me:

"He's not running for mayor."

-- Azi Paybarah

With Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons in City Hall right now to present a study on poverty in NYC with Mayor Bloomberg, it's worth noting that the study reads like a potential mayoral plan for Parsons, whose electability has been under discussion for some time now.

While there are some similarities between Parsons and Bloomberg (CEOs, self-made, Republican), there is one noticeable difference: Parsons seems more comfortable talking about poverty, a subject that received little enough conspicuous attention from Bloomberg during his first term that it became a central line of attack for Fernando Ferrer last year. The study's recommendations make reference to expanded affordable housing, public education and job training.

Noting that nearly 340,000 New Yorkers are employed and living below the poverty line, Parsons writes, "Playing by the rules and being rewarded for hard work must be the ticket to financial security for our city's families."

-- Azi Paybarah

Hillary Clinton will speak at the September 18 funeral of former Texas governor Ann Richards.

Jonathan Tasini asks, 'How am I doing?'

Liz Benjamin finds charitable souls who will shoulder the burden of the unwanted pork coming out of Albany.

John DeSio makes the case for a Mayor Dick Parsons:

Voters would get a look at a self-made African American success story who also happens to be a Republican.

Republicans at Columbia University will host a Global Warming Beach Party.

Barack Obama 2008 chatter continues, now that he's visiting Iowa with an important Democratic operative.

A White House reporter says Tony Snow is more fun than Scott McClellan

Ed Koch attacks a congressman who has a beef with the president.

I believe John Conyers, by launching these attacks on the President while the country is at war, is doing a disservice to the country, but of course, he has the right to do that.

And above is a television ad from upstate Democratic congressional candidate, Eric Massa, who opposes "anything that even rhymes with NAFTA."

-- Azi Paybarah

Is Time Warner Chairman and CEO Richard Parsons, according to this item in New York Magazine.

In the past, most of Parsons's political contributions in the City have gone to Democrats like Mark Green and Freddy Ferrer, and potential '09 challenger, Bill Thompson. There was one notable Republican who got a donation from Parsons: Rudy Giuliani.

So, if this media mogul is anything like the one who ended up in City Hall, Parsons could run as a, uh...?

-- Azi Paybarah

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Errol Louis writes about the prison population and political district lines.

The Post has it that Eliot Spitzer may endorse Andrew Cuomo; and that Mike Bloomberg may have asked Richard Parsons if he is interested in running for mayor in 2009.

And the Times tries to clear up the Weld-D'Amato feud.

—Nicole Brydson

On Feb. 17, Time Inc.  read more »

One interesting moment at yesterday's New School campaignfest came at the end, when Mark Halperin asked for speculation on the 2009 Republican nominee. Ray Kelly's name was, of course, mentioned; but the guess that caught my attention came from Miller aide Steve Sigmund, who used to work for the AOL Time Warner Foundation: Dick Parsons.  read more »

For the increasing numbers of believers in the notion of a Clinton-Murdoch alliance, which The Observer suggested a few months ago, today was a big day.

Rupert, famously dismissive of what he calls "gabfests" had agreed to join Time Warner's Richard Parsons and Sony's Howard Stringer on a panel moderated by Bill Clinton at his Clinton Global Initiative.

In anticipation, the Financial Times today recalled Murdoch's alliances with Tony Blair and Ed Koch. Tina Brown, in today's Washington Post, saw the end of an alliance:

"When Murdoch's executives start publishing diaries about working for Rupert in the Dubya years, my guess is you will see an entry, dated sometime in 2005 or 2006, about the shift in mood on the day he first murmurs that the neocons 'have started to look like dying elephants.'"

Meanwhile, Murdoch's London tabloids have fed the speculation that he has soured on Bush by giving buckets of ink to the President's "bathroom break" note.

Murdoch's appearance on the panel, then, was closely watched, though he gave no indication of feeling the scrutiny, slouching in the rightmost white armchair at the Sheraton ballroom, with Clinton to the audience's left.

Clinton seemed to be taking a dig at Rupert when he asked -- in the context of foreign aid, but with echoes of weapons of mass destruction -- what a news organization should do "when you know you have a consistent misperception."

"Rupert, would you like to start?" Clinton asked.

But the real sparring came between Murdoch and Parsons, on the subject of CNN International, which Parsons referred to in calling CNN "the best and best-positioned global news media company in the world."

"I don't watch CNN International, and I doubt that anyone else does," Murdoch replied. The channel, he said, is "unwatchable...and it's so anti-American."

Bill came to Parsons's defense: "I always watch CNN International overseas," he said. "You make me feel like it's like taking a shower with my shoes on here."

So much for the sparring. After the panel, Clinton and Murdoch chatted in a corner, Clinton finally bringing a grin to Murdoch's face. They then could be heard agreeing that agricultural subsidies in rich nations do great harm to the developing world.

Meanwhile, Murdoch fans, including a largely ignored Brad Pitt, waited patiently for a moment with the mogul.  read more »

The stirrings around the Republican nomination to face, probably, Eliot Spitzer, are growing, and it looks like a three-way contest: Tom Golisano, Bill Weld, and some wild-card tycoon -- in the wildest fantasies of GOP insiders, make it Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons.

First, here's some unexpected news from the AP:

Tom Golisano says he just spoke to John McCain: "He was very personable and said the Republican Party could use people like me, and that he'd love to have me as a candidate [for governor]."

An odd, deliberately-placed story that makes it sound like Golisano is feeling a little heat from Weld's increasingly serious mutterings.  read more »

And the Parsons notion is not as farfetched as it sounds. Running Time Warner isn't as fun as it once was. And Parsons came up in New York State politics, as an aide to the original Rockefeller Republican, Nelson Rockefeller.

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Two years after AOL's Steve Case beguiled Time Warner's JerryLevin with a thrilling vision that new-  read more »

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