Billionaire press baron Mortimer Zuckerman, the Montreal-born former rival of Conrad Black, says he is being encouraged to run for New York mayor — by the man who holds the title.
“I would love to be in that job,” said Mr. Zuckerman in a New York Times article Monday hinting that current Mayor Michael Bloomberg — a fellow billionaire media magnate — was considering the 75-year-old as a potential successor.
Mr. Zuckerman told the paper that Mr. Bloomberg had recently talked to him about a possible run in the November election, adding that he was “not the only person.”
“A lot of people have talked to me about that possibility,” he said.
“If I could be appointed, I’d probably be serious about it.”
The son of Russian immigrant parents and the grandson of an Orthodox rabbi, Mr. Zuckerman was raised in a middle-class Jewish home in Montreal’s Outremont neighbourhood.
Moving to the United States in 1961, Mr. Zuckerman first made his name in the Boston real estate market before making his foray into publishing with the 1980 purchase of The Atlantic Monthly.
In the early 1990s, Mr. Zuckerman found himself locked in a bidding war with fellow Montrealer and McGill alumnus Conrad Black over the ownership of the New York Daily News.
Lord Black initially secured the support of the paper’s managers, but they were forced to switch their allegiance after Mr. Zuckerman won the critical backing of the paper’s unions.
Ten years later, the two Montrealers publicly crossed paths again when Mr. Zuckerman’s name was floated as a possible saviour for Lord Black’s company Hollinger Inc.
“He would be a strong candidate and a brilliant mayor,” wrote Lord Black in a Tuesday email to the Post.
Mr. Zuckerman has since sold off his stake in The Atlantic as well as Fast Company, but he remains the chairman and editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, as well as publisher of the Daily News. With a reported wealth of $2.4-billion, Mr. Zuckerman is the 188th richest man in the United States, according to Forbes.
Although he became an American citizen in 1977, traces of his Canadian accent can still be heard when he says the word “outhouse,” Mr. Zuckerman told a New York real estate periodical in 2011.
A regular columnist and frequent TV commentator on PBS, CNN, Fox and even The Colbert Report, in 2010 Mr. Zuckerman briefly considered a run against New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand — although he dropped out for family reasons.
As he told the Daily News at the time, he did not feel able to devote “unhindered attention” to an election campaign.
Just like Mayor Bloomberg, who was a member of the Democratic Party, won the mayor’s seat on the Republican ticket and is now finishing his third and final term as an independent, Mr. Zuckerman’s politics are sometimes hard to pinpoint.
Nationalpost