LOS ANGELES (AP) — New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who says he’s not running for president, chose delegate-rich California yesterday from which to deliver a scorching assessment of Washington for failing to keep up with the need for new airports, roads, water systems and bridges across America.
While China and other nations are investing heavily in ports and high-speed trains, “Washington doesn’t have a plan” to address crumbling U.S. infrastructure, Mr. Bloomberg said.
In remarks clearly aimed at a national audience, the mayor said politics trumps common sense in Congress, where pork-barrel spending takes priority.
Washington “spends money to win votes,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “It’s hurting our country.”
The mayor, an independent and former Democrat then Republican, appeared with Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, a Republican, and Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, to announce a coalition that would push for more investment in ports, highways and other infrastructure. Both governors are known for reaching across party lines to achieve compromise.
Standing at a transit station with the governors, Mr. Bloomberg said “independent, nonpartisan solutions” were needed.
“Let’s just get the job done,” he said.
It was the second day of a trip that also took Mr. Bloomberg to Texas, another key state on the presidential-election map. He met Friday with a specialist in third-party ballot access who served as campaign manager for H. Ross Perot, who ran as an independent in 1992 and 1996.
In an era when the public views government with suspicion and loathing, the billionaire mayor appears to be honing an image as an innovative problem-solver working outside the partisan scrum of Washington politics.
Mr. Bloomberg has been quietly polling and analyzing voting trends in every state as he contemplates launching a campaign. On Tuesday, his supporters began a 50-state petition drive in an attempt to “draft” him into the race.
Mr. Rendell, a prodigious fundraiser and former general chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is a political maverick who delivered most of his ambitious first-term agenda by building coalitions in a legislature controlled by Republicans. He is in his second year of his second four-year term.
The coalition, Building America’s Future, will be a nonprofit organization that will include elected and other officials. It will work with presidential candidates and the platform committees of the national political parties to bring attention to the need for more investment in infrastructure.
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