Mayor Bloomberg is a Valentine's Day baby—he was born on February 14, 1942—and he's loving all your birthday wishes. The Wall Street Journal give him the birthday/"you're old" treatment today: "Michael Rubens Bloomberg took the oath of office as New York City's 108th mayor when he was 59 years old. He turns 70 on Tuesday, and if he finishes his third term as expected next year, he would be the oldest serving mayor since the five boroughs were consolidated in 1898." more ›

When it comes to elections most people are focused on the biggie this November. But not New York City pols! They're already focused on next November when Gracie Mansion, long left vacant by Mike Bloomberg, is once again up for grabs. And the early front runner is... still City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. more ›

After a Hurricane Irene-assisted bump, it seems things are back to normal for the sinking ship that is Bloomberg's disastrous third term. According to a new Quinnipiac University poll, a majority of New Yorkers believe that Bloomberg has "lost focus"—and those same NYers would vote NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly in as mayor were elections held today. more ›

There's been a whole lot of hoo-ha over Alec Baldwin's potential mayoral run, and he's not doing much to dispel the rumors. Baldwin stopped to chitchat with Letterman last night and explained that he'd like to "be" the mayor, not necessarily "run" for mayor. And why would that be? Mostly because of his smoking hot 27-year-old-yoga-instructor girlfriend Hilaria Thomas, who's introduced on-camera. more ›

There's been a whole lot of brouhaha about a possible Alec Baldwin mayoral bid for the 2013 race: will he do it? Will he square off against his flaxen-haired, freakishly tan baby brother Stephen? What will become of Jack Donaghy?! We're not sure, and Baldwin apparently isn't either, because he needs to back to school to learn how to be a mayor first. more ›

Kelsey Grammer, possibly the only straight Republican actor to ever play a gay cabaret owner, is considering a new role: mayor of New York City. more ›

The next election is way off, but pols hungry to replace our diminutive billionaire mayor from Boston are already lining up to raise funds. And, with Anthony Weiner out of the picture, one candidate is distinctly leading the pack. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn raised $1.32 million dollars in the past six months, bringing her campaign's total to $4 million. more ›

Since the ongoing revelations of Rep. Anthony "Stop Staring At My Weapon!" Weiner's private life can't stop/won't stop, his chances at running for mayor in 2013 are looking dimmer and dimmer. This week, a friend of 30 Rock star Alec Baldwin alleged that The Shadow was interested in a mayoral run. And Mayor Bloomberg said he thinks that's great...as long as he doesn't bother him whatsoever: "I only want him to stay out of my business for the next 935 days. For the record, I do not plan to go into his business." more ›

If there's been one silver lining to emerge from this whole Anthony Weiner mess, it's the tantalizing prospect of The Shadow as our next mayor. According to a friend, 30 Rock star Alec Baldwin is mulling throwing his hat into the 2013 NYC mayoral race: “Alec said, ‘Hey, maybe this changes the race. The dynamics have shifted.’ The Democrats need a high-profile candidate, and Alec can fill that bill,” the unnamed "pal" told The Daily. more ›

Do you know who you're voting for in 2013? Why the hell not? Fine, you can join the other 27 percent of New Yorkers who are still "undecided" about who they would support in the 2013 mayoral election. However, even if they don't know who they want, they know that Eliot Spitzer should stay far away from the ballot. In a Marist poll, 62 percent of registered voters say that the former Governor and CNN pundit should not run for mayor. So who's the mayoral frontrunner? more ›

While we huff and puff over whether term limits should stay at three or go back to two, Chicago got the shocking news that its mayor, Richard Daley, will step down next year. Daley, who was first elected in 1989, and his father have been mayor of Chicago for 42 of the past 55 years. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has expressed interest in the job, saying earlier this year, "I hope Mayor Daley seeks reelection. I will work and support him if he seeks reelection. But if Mayor Daley doesn't, one day I would like to run for mayor of the city of Chicago. That's always been an aspiration of mine even when I was in the House of Representatives." more ›

Forget about Facebook Places, it doesn't even work in NYC, and even if it did, it's totally going to get you in trouble. So Foursquare it is, for anyone who feels the desire to let a select group of friends know where they are at every waking moment. The NY Times has a profile on some such individuals, who are winning the Mayoral race in... well, wherever. more ›

Page Six speaks to an insider who has a devious and not totally far-fetched explanation about why disgraced ex-governor Eliot Spitzer went to CNN: He apparently considers his new talk show host gig as a way to regain his reputation and will run for mayor after Bloomberg's third term ends in 2013. Spitzer, who resigned after news of his regular encounters with call girls, supposedly believes the "unforgiving" nature of upstate voter means a state office run would be fruitless. The source told the paper: "He thinks that after he's on air a few months, he'll become a familiar face and the scandal will fade away." more ›

Newark Mayor Cory Booked was re-elected to a second term last night, winning 59% of the vote. Booker told his supporters, "We know we have difficult days ahead, but if I want to be in the trenches with any group of people in the United States of America, I want to be in the trenches fighting with my fellow residents of the city of Newark." more ›

Representative Anthony Weiner is the subject of an admiring profile in this week's Observer, which begins with a funny account of the congressman's recent appearance at a club packed with twenty-something constituents. Taking the mic in the DJ booth, Weiner cracked wise: "Every single moment that we are stroking our beards and gazing at our navel and thinking about the world we’d like to be and singing ‘Kumbaya’ is another day we’re not punching Bill O’Reilly in the nose." Not stopping there, he proceeded to roast the Tea Party: more ›

According to a Marist Poll, New Yorkers may like Bloomberg more than they let on. The survey [PDF] says, "a plurality of registered voters citywide—38%—say Bloomberg has been the best mayor for New York City in three decades," and 56% of New Yorkers think he is doing well in office (down from his January 69% ratings). So what were the criteria? more ›

Five-time Newark mayor Sharpe James left a prison facility in Virginia Tuesday, and boarded a Greyhound back to his home city, where he'll serve out the rest of his 27-month sentence from a halfway house. Of course he could have taken a plane or a train, but instead the former official—convicted of fraud for selling city property to his mistress at a bargain price—chose the company of his former inmates. On the trip back he even staged a mini-protest, demanding refunds for all when the group was delayed. “Unfortunately, Mayor, it doesn’t work that way,” he was told. more ›

Five-time Newark mayor Sharpe James is leaving Petersburg Correctional Complex in Virginia this morning and hopping a bus back to New Jersey. He'll finish out his 27 month sentence—for arranging the sale of state property to his girlfriend, who flipped it for a huge profit—from a halfway house in the city he helped run for 20 years. The unrepentant former official recently spoke with the Star Ledger, claiming wrongful conviction and bad-mouthing current Mayor Cory Booker. more ›

According to a new study, if all the first-time voters that helped elect Obama had cast their ballots in the November mayoral election, Democrat Bill Thompson might be sitting in Bloomberg's seat. "Bill Thompson only lost by 50,000 votes," CUNY Prof. John Mollenkopf told the News. "If only 50% of new voters came out, Thompson would be mayor. ... Here was a chance to knock off an incumbent mayor, to elect the second black mayor in New York history. If they had mobilized, it would have been huge, huge, huge news." Unfortunately the newly political set was hung over after the excitement of Obama's win. Only about one in five of them even showed up for the mayoral election—71,335 out of 338,128 whose votes were counted in the presidential tally. Maybe next time? more ›

In a story that makes you wonder if he already has a P.R. team at work on his rumored Mayoral campaign, the Daily News reports that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly rescued an injured woman yesterday. After Queens resident Devi Cusack twisted her ankle in a pothole on Broadway, Kelly and an aide got out of their NYPD vehicle and helped her to the sidewalk. "He's such an awesome guy," said Cusack. "I asked him if he was Secret Service ... He said, 'No, I'm the commissioner.' I said, 'Oh, you're Ray Kelly!'" Kelly stayed with Cusack for 20 minutes waiting for an ambulance before he called for a police radio car to take her to the hospital. more ›

Mayor Bloomberg's right hand man is leaving his job at City Hall—so he can work for Bloomberg LP. Deputy Mayor for Government Affairs Kevin Sheekey will return to the Mayor's media company, where he worked from 1997 to 2001, to take a post advising Bloomberg on his acclaimed "philanthropic efforts." more ›

Despite his newly minted status in the party (before 2007 he was a Republican, before 2001 a Democrat), Independents want Mayor Bloomberg as their presidential candidate in 2012! The chairman of the party's Minnesota branch—the very same that helped raise WWF champ Jesse "the Body" Ventura to the governorship—has asked that the NY mayor give "serious consideration" to a White House run. "The two-party system has catastrophically failed America," said Jack Uldrich. "America needs a serious, credible independent to right our sinking ship and get it back on track to a prosperous future." more ›

With his department under scrutiny for allegedly falsifying crime statistics, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is still landing high approval ratings, besting Mayor Bloomberg and matching the top cop's highest figures of all time. A new study found that 70 percent of New York voters approve of Kelly's performance, while earlier this week researchers revealed that only 60 percent approve of Bloomberg. Does that mean Kelly's could be a contender for Mayor in the next election? more ›

Could Brooklyn have skateboard parks? I like to skateboard with my cousin . . . I like to stop and kick the board up in the air and catch it in my hands and would like a skateboard park to ride in and do tricks. It's good exercise and burns lots of calories. Without a skateboard park, people will have to jump over a fire hydrant for a stunt. They would say, "This is boring, dude." I hope there is a skateboard park here one day. more ›

Though Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's opponents have warned him his bid against Gov. Paterson will be "racially divisive," a new poll shows most voters don't think so. 80 percent of respondents in a Quinnipiac Univeristy poll said a run-off between the two Democrats would not upset racial relations, reports the NY Post. Among black voters, 73 percent said there'd be no racial split. This week Paterson and Republican candidate Rick Lazio both chastised Cuomo for waiting to officially declare his candidacy, but the poll showed 78 percent of voters aren't impatient for the announcement. It also confirmed that, among Democratic voters, the attorney general is still twice as popular as the state's first-ever black governor, reports NY1. more ›

With cuts for 16 fire houses, the mayor's budget is expected to leave many firefighters out in the cold—but newsman Anderson Cooper is just moving in. The NY Post reported that Cooper will soon take up residence in the century-old Greenwich Village fire house he purchased in September. With the help of conversion architect Cary Tamarkin, the globe-trotting CNN anchor will have the place homey in no time, though he plans to keep its brass poles and historic facade. No projections have been made of how much the residential conversion will cost, but the building's original price tag was $4.3 million. Now how many actual fire houses could that fund? more ›

Well, that didn't take long at all. Just two months after he lost in a closer-than-expected race against Mayor Bloomberg, former city comptroller Bill Thompson says he will run for the city's highest office again. Despite rumors he would take on Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, or run for state comptroller, Thompson told the Times: "I am not running for office this year; it is my intention to run for mayor in 2013." more ›

For the first time, Mike Bloomberg's own mother won't be attending his inauguration. Hizzoner insists it's not a slap in the face—it's supposed to be cold tomorrow and the woman turns 101 on Saturday—and anyway, his third inauguration is going to be a low-key affair that puts "service ahead of celebration," as the Mayor's spokesman puts it. About 4,200 people are expected to attend the one-hour ceremony at City Hall, which might be worth checking out because they're handing out commemorative biodegradable mugs, paid for by the mayor and filled with hot apple cider! But despite the cup of cheer, there's going to be a noticeable lack of star power. more ›