With news that Mayor Bloomberg is planning to attend a meeting about a possible third party bid for the White House, the mayor's possible presidential aspirations finally enter 2008. If he does plan on running, he's lucky he has his billions to get the hundreds of thousands of petition signatures to get onto ballots across the country.

The NY Times looked at the petition quest. Naturally, the states' petition requirements (and deadlines) are all different: Oklahoma requires 44,000 signatures (of Oklahomans), Florida requires over 100,000 signatures of residents, and New York needs 15,000 registered voter signatures, with "at least 100 signatures from each of 15 of the state’s 29 Congressional districts."

The rough cost of getting signatures (usually from people who will go door-to-door) is $2 per signature, meaning it'll cost $1.3 million to get 650,000 signatures. Carl Towe, whose company helped Ross Perot with some ballot, said, “If [Bloomberg's] familiar with how the signature-gathering business works, and he hasn’t already contacted someone, he better do so soon, otherwise he’s got a smoke screen up." Dude, Mayor Bloomberg has smoke screens for his smoke screens! We're sure he's secretly been building his own petition-gathering company for the effort.

Still, on New Year's Eve, mayoral spokesman Stu Loeser said, "He's not running. He hasn't changed his mind." And some current candidates aren't worried. Republican candidate Mike Huckabee said a Bloomberg candidacy "will probably do more to help the Republican than to help the Democrat. I welcome his entry into the race."