Doug Schoen

Michael Bloomberg drew some fire last week for donating $500,000 to state Senate Republicans just as Eliot Spitzer is trying to help Democrats take over the Senate.

A minor-but-interesting side-detail about that working relationship: As late as 2006, the New York State Senate Republican Campaign Committee was paying thousands of dollars in consulting fees to the firm Penn, Schoen & Berland, which was co-founded by Hillary Clinton’s top strategist Mark Penn.  read more »

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Michael Bloomberg's pollster Doug Schoen will appear on John Gambling’s WABC show at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning to talk about his new book, according to a source.  read more »

So here’s a great example of the elegantly compartmentalized P.R. strategy being employed on Michael Bloomberg’s behalf, where the official, earnestly delivered line out of the City Hall press office is that it’s New York-centric business as usual, even as the likes of Kevin Sheekey and Doug Schoen drop ever-stronger hints that it’s not.

During an appearance by Bloomberg’s spokesman Stu Loeser last night on NY1, the subject turned from the mayor’s State of the City speech to the ever-present presidential rumors, as host Rita Nissan pointed out that Schoen had told the L.A. Times that national polling is being done and “also, one of the mayor’s top aides confirmed to us that polling is going on to test voter sentiment across the country.”

“Is polling happening?” she asked.

Loeser responded, “You’ll have to ask Doug about what Doug said and you’re going to have to ask whoever your sources [are] about that. The mayor is completely focused on governing the city and that’s what we saw in today’s speech.”

Depends, I suppose, on what your definition of “completely focused” is.

Time columnist Joe Klein created a stir at the Council on Foreign Relations earlier today when he suggested that "an element of unwitting sabotage" may be behind Bill Clinton's series of apparently off-message comments while campaigning on behalf of his wife.

Klein speculated: "He's worrying, 'Maybe she's going to be a better president than I was'."

He also suggested that Clinton was ambivalent about his wife’s candidacy because, alongside those fears, "Consciously, I think that he sees her [possible] election as president as the final validation of his presidency."  read more »

Michael Bloomberg is conducting polls in all 50 states, the most concrete sign of his interest in running for president, reports the AP.

"They want a hard-headed sense of their chances,'' said Doug Schoen, who spearheaded Bloomberg's voter database efforts, known as microtargeting, for his two mayoral campaigns.

In November, Schoen told an audience at Baruch College, “Let me just say at the outset I don’t think he is going to run.”

 

What changed?

I got scooped on posting my own video of Michael Bloomberg (yet again) blowing off steam over another 2008 question.

At a press conference this morning, I asked Bloomberg about the upcoming book from Doug Schoen, the pollster employed by Bloomberg during his two mayoral campaigns. The book's title seems to fit Bloomberg's message perfectly: “Declaring Independence: The Beginning of the End of the Two-Party System.”

Although he called it a ridiculous question today, the mayor was more forthright when Brian Lehrer asked him about it earlier. "I don’t think that either national party stands for anything," Bloomberg said in that interview, which you can see here.

My ridiculous hunch (to go with my ridiculous question) is that a Huffington Post story about Bloomberg's use of a tutor for national and international issues was a signal of sorts that it's okay to ask him about policy now -- and that we should probably stop wasting our time seeking new sound bites of him beating up on the national parties.

Doug Schoen, a noted pollster Michael Bloomberg has relied on for two mayoral elections, and who may be called upon again should Bloomberg enter the presidential race, is coming out with a new book entitled “Declaring Independence.” [via Steve M.]

The subtitle of the book is “The Beginning of the End of the Two-Party System.”

Schoen wasn't interested in talking about the book when I reached him on his cell phone. (It was out of character that he even answered). When I asked about his book, he replied “Thanks so much,” and hung up on me.

More after the jump.

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Here's Michael Bloomberg dismissinga story published today that says his aides are reaching out to his former campaign consultants and asking them not to get locked in with other presidential candidates until Bloomberg decides if he'll run.

“There was this breathless story, like something’s changed,” Bloomberg said at the City Hall press conference this morning. “I have no idea where it came from or what it‘s about.”

He continued, “Do I have advisers on lots of things? Sure. Do I know people? If I was going to run, I’d know exactly who to go to." (video stops here)

I asked him who those people are.
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Doug Schoen, the noted pollster who crunched numbers for Bill Clinton in the mid-1990’s and for Michael Bloomberg in 2001 and 2005, consented to answer a hypothetical question about a possible Bloomberg campaign for president.  read more »

Doug Schoen, the noted pollster who crunched numbers for Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign in the mid 1990's, and for Michael Bloomberg’s 2001 mayoral race, said last night that he doesn’t think Bloomberg will run for president.

Schoen, speaking at a forum about presidential polling at Baruch College, was answering a question from an audience member who wanted to know which of the two major parties would be most affected by a Bloomberg presidential run.

“Let me just say at the outset I don’t think he is going to run,” Schoen said. “Largely Phil’s question is an academic one. It was very interesting to me that at this point, he appears to be hurting the Republicans at least as much if not more than the Democrats. I think the reason for that has more to do with disaffected Republicans who probably don’t want to vote, at this point, for Hillary Clinton--who hear, you know, Independent Michael Bloomberg, don’t know much about who Michael Bloomberg is, and are saying, ‘You know what, we don’t want to vote Republican, and this is an alternative.”

More after the jump.  read more »

Last week, I wrote a story about Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's pollster and close political advisor, and his former business associates. As I noted earlier, Penn is suing his former business partner Michael Berland, and several other former employees of their company, Penn, Schoen & Berland, for setting up a rival consulting company, allegedly in violation of a non-compete clause in their contracts. Berland and the other defendants are accused of trying to woo away Penn's corporate clients, but the suit also has political implications, because Berland and another recently departed partner, Doug Schoen, have worked for Michael Bloomberg before, and would presumably be on board for a presidential campaign should the mayor decide to run. That is, if the non-compete clause allows them to.

(More after the jump.)  read more »

In the paper this week, I tried finding out what ever happened to that revolutionary voter data information that helped Michael Bloomberg customize his message to practically every New York City voter.

In his recently published book, The Power of the Vote, Bloomberg pollster Doug Schoen said it “was nothing less than a revolution in political outreach and communication.”

So, where is that stuff now?

“I don’t really think I can be helpful on that subject,” Bloomberg pollster Doug Schoen told me in a very short interview.

“It’s probably locked away in some computer vault,” Bloomberg’s former senior adviser Bill Cunningham told me, joking only a little bit. He also said it’s probably useless anyway.

Anyone want the Bloomberg 2008 account?

The pollster who worked for Mike Bloomberg during his 2001 and 2005 campaigns would, presumably, have been the logical candidate to play the same roll on the mayor's oft-imagined presidential campaign.

But as Ben reported earlier, the pollster, Doug Schoen, is leaving the power-firm of Penn, Schoen and Berland to go work for Fox News.

Schoen has a "no compete" clause with the firm, meaning he won't be available to crunch numbers for Bloomberg (or any other candidate) if the mayor's presidential fancy ever becomes reality.

UPDATE: It's worth pointing out that Michael Berland, the third major figure at Schoen's old company, played a pivotal role in Bloomberg's elections and is, hypothetically, available if Bloomberg 2008 ever materializes.

FURTHER UPDATE: An informed source notes that Berland may have a similar no-compete clause, taking him out of consideration. (Penn is a pollster for Hillary.)

-- Azi Paybarah

First, Ned Lamont is falling behind Joe Lieberman in fund-raising. Lamont has $330,000 on hand, compared to Lieberman's $4.7 million.

And now, Arianna Huffington is writing a theoretical obituary for him, blaming the consultants Lamont brought on board for dulling down a once-exciting campaign.

"The addition to the Lamont campaign after the primary of Democratic insiders Howard Wolfson, Doug Schoen, and Stephanie Cutter has been part of the problem. According to their poll-driven culture, one must move to the center and appeal to those in the middle. And, as a result, once-promising politicians are insidiously encouraged to lose their moral bearing -- and the authenticity that made them so compelling in the first place."

I'm not sure Arianna Huffington defines "compelling" in the same way as the average Connecticut general election voter. But still, it's surely not good news for such a prominent Lamont sympathizer to be engaging in recrminations -- even hypothetical ones -- three weeks before the election.

-- Azi Paybarah

We apologize to Serena Torrey for missing last night's forum on third-party candidates, which New York Magazine, vis-a-vis its current package, is trying to market as the "purple party."

Especially since Ben Smith, who as a staff of one over there is still more mobile than our temporary Politicker staff, got in and got that already-known-yet-totally-fun-to-totally-confirm tidbit out of the evening: Hillary's Running for President!

Ben says:

There's a famous, convenient superstition in Clintonland that you don't look past the next election. Clinton pollster Doug Schoen, happily, isn't the superstitious type, and delivered an unusually blunt assessment of Hillary's 2008 plans and prospects at a New York Magazine forum on an imagined third-party movement* last night at the New School.

What'd he say?

"She undeniably is a 50-50 chance, at least," to be elected president, he said. "Senator Clinton...has the luxury of being able to position herself toward the center as time goes forward...[leaving the] opening and opportunity on the left wing of the [Democratic] party."

Schoen went on at some length on the topic; see Ben's blog for more.

Then again, third-party symposiums are symptoms of early days in an election. Aren't they? We hope?

- Tom McGeveran Note to comments section: We will link to Ben's blog when we want you to read items there. It's not "awkward" or "weird" or "surreal." Nor does it mean you're reading "the same stuff" on both blogs. It means: we're linking to another blog. Not unheard of. Just to clear that up. You need to read this item, so we're linking to it. Maybe you already read it? Then you're well-read! Congratulations!

Mike's new round of spending figures is out, and he's up to $63.8 million total.

He spent $10.2 million on television in the last two weeks alone.  read more »

Which is to say, Bill Knapp and Doug Schoen can each buy another house or two.

How are we supposed to read Mike's second attack on George Bush in a week other than as something like a stretch for the panic button?

Today, with construction workers beside him, the Mayor called on the President to reinstate prevailing wage rules for federal contractors on the Gulf Coast. Last week, he took a shot at John Roberts.

What this seems to mean is that his alliance with the President-- a minor local political irritant at most times -- has suddenly turned into a major liability. Bush's numbers are as bad as they've ever been, and he's most toxic among the African-American voters Mike will have to count on in November. And after three years of loyalty to the President, it's hard to see how a handful of statements will convince people the Mayor and the President have nothing to do with each other.

(There's a Quinnipiac poll out tomorrow, and perhaps we'll learn what the Mayor's nervous about there.)  read more »

The Politicker and many others have been dismissing the notion that Bush could be a factor in this local race.

But Bloomberg pollster Doug Schoen has a bit more information than we do, so it's probably best to defer to what seems to be his judgement: that Mike has a big Bush problem.