If you missed it yesterday, the Daily News is floating the rumor – backed, apparently, by a tantalizing quote from State Senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno – that Donald Trump is thinking of running for governor as a Republican. The News is pushing this story again today. Random thoughts:
*Is the NY GOP this desperate? Why, yes, in fact, they are. I haven’t followed the travails of Bill Weld lately, but I’m not feeling very optimistic about him at this stage.
*Would I rather have Trump as my governor than Eliot Spitzer? Yes, but that’s hardly saying much.
*Trump does have some obvious selling points. He’d be self-financing. He understands business, which makes an effective contrast to the business-hating Spitzer. He knows how to get things done, and likely would work better and less confrontationally with the Legislature than celebrity governors like Schwarzenegger and Ventura have. He’d finally get the Trade Center site working.
*I have neither the time nor the energy here to recount the downsides of Trump as a public official (or as a campaigner), but let’s just say there’s no shortage of those, either. And he’d be only the most nominal of Republicans, even compared to Weld.
*The NY tabloids could not invent a better candidate for the purpose of selling newspapers.