Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Koch on Bloomberg: ‘He’d Be a Fine President’

If Mayor Michael Bloomberg casts his hat into the 2008 presidential race, he has the blessing of a predecessor at New York’s City Hall, Ed Koch.

Speaking to the Forward by telephone this morning, the former New York City mayor said he would welcome a run by Bloomberg.

“Oh yes, I think he’d be a fine president,” Koch said.

Aside from their stints in the mayor’s office and Jewish backgrounds, Koch and Bloomberg share a maverick streak. Bloomberg announced yesterday that he was leaving the Republican party. A longtime Democrat, Bloomberg switched parties shortly before his run for mayor. For his part, Koch, a Democrat who served as mayor from 1978 to 1989, broke with his party to back President Bush’s reelection in 2004.

This campaign season, however, Koch has expressed enthusiasm for the candidacy of New York’s Senator Hillary Clinton. In his weekly New York Press column, Koch has written that he hoped to be “able to take a role in the campaign to elect her as President of the United States.”

Koch, who delivers commentaries on Bloomberg Radio, told the Forward that he is standing firm in his support for Clinton in the Democratic primaries. He would not, however, close the door on backing a Bloomberg candidacy.

“My support for Hillary is in the Democratic primary,” Koch said. “If Bloomberg were to come in, I would consider it at that time as to which of the two I’ll be supporting. I don’t have to make any determination now, because he is not yet a candidate.”

(Contacted by the Forward, Clinton’s office said they have not issued a statement on Bloomberg’s announcement.)

Bloomberg has coyly played down his presidential prospects for the press. “A short, Jewish billionaire from New York? C’mon,” he has said.

Koch said that he doubted Bloomberg’s Jewishness would hold him back should he decide to make a run for the Oval Office. Koch said he believes that antisemitism would play a “very minimal” role.

“We have reached the point where blacks can win — I believe that everybody thinks that Colin Powell would have won if he had run for president — and Obama is certainly a contender. So I don’t think that one’s ethnicity or religion anymore is a determinant in the election.”

Bloomberg, Koch said, has never sought to aggressively portray himself as a Jewish politician.

“He does it on the merits, it has nothing to do with being Jewish, and he certainly doesn’t seek to portray himself, nor should he, nor did I. He’s proud of being Jewish, but that’s a private matter,” Koch said. “He is an American who is of Jewish ethnicity and religion, as am I.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.