Hour Two: Bloomberg Gives a Final 'No'

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BILL WOLFF (Announcer): From NPR News in New York, this is the BRYANT PARK PROJECT.

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RACHEL MARTIN, host:

Live from NPR Studios at Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan, this is the BRYANT PARK PROJECT from NPR News: news, information, ill-fitting jeans. Hey, I'm Rachel Martin.

ALISON STEWART, host:

And I'm Alison Stewart. It is Thursday, February 28, and I'm of the school of thought that it's not that you don't fit the jeans, the jeans don't fit you.

MARTIN: Totally.

STEWART: There's a conspiracy by all the jeans-makers out there to create so many pairs of jeans, and none of them will fit me. It's inevitable. But there are some ladies, some very smart, entrepreneurial ladies, girls, young women, who have come up with something that might help all of us out here, women and men, by the way. This is not a girl-exclusive story.

MARTIN: All right. Also, coming up in the show - I talked to a bike messenger. Apparently, bike messengers are having to really compete for jobs, not necessarily with each other, but with the Internet. And it has especially hit Seattle hard. It's ripped from the headlines from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a story about how bike messengers, there are dwindling numbers there. Apparently, there are some dwindling numbers in New York, but there are some interesting labor statistics that kind of explain why we shouldn't count out bike messengers yet.

STEWART: Oh, good.

MARTIN: We'll talk to a bike messenger. Hopefully, he will ride his bike in here.

STEWART: There's something romantic about bike messengers and bike messengering.

MARTIN: Until they try to get you on that corner.

STEWART: Yeah, that's bad.

MARTIN: That's not good.

STEWART: Kevin Bacon, it brings back really fond memories of Kevin Bacon for me. Also, it's the 15th anniversary of the beginning of the Waco standoff. Remember that day? We are going to remember that day with one of the people who appeared as a witness at the congressional hearings on Waco.

MARTIN: And a contest to the moon, Alice.

STEWART: To the moon.

MARTIN: Sponsored by - who could sponsor this? In this world and this time, who would sponsor a contest on how to get something on the moon? Google. The wiki space race will begin.

STEWART: We'll also get today's headlines in just a minute, but first, here's the BPP's big story.

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STEWART: The emergence of a centrist Republican, John McCain, and a work across party lines Democrat, Barack Obama, appears to have finally shut the door for good on a third-party presidential run by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

MARTIN: Today, the billionaire mayor puts a big, fat exclamation point on his series of denials that he wants the White House. In an op-ed in today's New York Times, he writes, quote, I listened carefully to those who encouraged me to run, but I am not and will not be a candidate for president.

STEWART: Now we know what you're thinking. Hasn't Bloomberg been saying this for months? Sort of, but he kept saying it in a way that kept the media guessing. He said he wasn't running for president when he announced last summer he was leaving the Republican party to become an independent, but he also said, quote, "the more people that run for office, the better."

MARTIN: He balked when Web sites popped up encouraging him to run, and he told us not to read into it when he attended a high-level, bipartisan forum at the University of Oklahoma in January. He even looked Ryan Seacrest in the eye during "New Year's Rockin Eve" and said it's not happening.

STEWART: Still, behind the scenes, Bloomberg's camp was reportedly looking into a run all along. Soon after he was reelected in 2005, his aides suggested he could spend $1 billion on a White House bid.

MARTIN: And the speculation has resurfaced periodically ever since. In fact, here's part of a story that aired just a few weeks ago, right after Super Tuesday, on New York's local CBS News television station.

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Unidentified Man: His aides are busy laying the groundwork for an independent run. Three political insiders told CBS2 they think last night's results make Bloomberg more likely to run. They say the more conservatives feud with moderates over John McCain and the more Democrats fight over Clinton versus Obama, the more room there will be for a third candidate.

STEWART: But now aides tell the Associate Press that it's really over. Bloomberg's run would have relied upon voters who were disenfranchised by more-extreme candidates in both parties. But the rise of McCain and Obama, both of whom are succeeding in that demographic, seems to have put the kibosh on his aspiration, at least for this year.

MARTIN: So what's next for the mayor? From the sound of today's New York Times piece, possibly an endorsement, but for whom? Listen to what Bloomberg wrote, quote, if a candidate takes an independent, non-partisan approach and embraces practical solutions that challenge party orthodoxy, I'll join others in helping that candidate win the White House. End-quote, end-question mark?

STEWART: That's the BPP's big story. Now let's get some more of today's headlines from Rachel.

WOLFF: This is NPR.

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