And he's not necessarily going to be predictable about it. Aides say he's been musing out loud about urging Ray Kelly, who was police commissioner under David Dinkins and now manages security for Bear Stearns, to return to government, though not as top cop (Bernie Kerik has been asked to stay on in that position). Bloomberg may ask Kelly to try a radically different role: schools chancellor. "Ray's tough, and the unions are not going to roll him," says an aide. Whether Kelly, who did not return my call, wants to trade an investment-bank salary for the headache and heartache of the public schools is another matter, but Bloomberg's trial balloon reveals a willingness to try shaking things up.

A Bloomberg administration is going to be very different from Giuliani's reign, if only because the two men's personalities couldn't be more different. The mayor-elect is notoriously arrogant (not surprising in a self-made $4 billion man) and his prickliness often showed through on the campaign trail, but unlike Giuliani, he's not terribly vindictive and he tries not to bear grudges. Bloomberg's a fix-it-now guy who may blow up, but when it's over, it's over. Even when his campaign was floundering in gaffes earlier this year, he didn't fire top people and bring in a new crew. "Mike gets impatient, but he very rarely loses his temper," says Ester Fuchs, a Barnard political-science professor and a campaign adviser. Bloomberg doesn't have a tortured dark side. He's basically a salesman, a happy person with an orderly CEO mentality, and he comes into this new job with very few enemies. At least, very few as of yet.

Republican leaders would obviously like City Hall to stay a recognizable GOP landmark, and Bloomberg aides are bracing for Giuliani, in his remaining eight weeks in office, to try to push through appointments for his cronies to government boards and judicial slots. "Every mayor does it before he leaves," says Kathy Cudahy, "and it's already happening."

On the other hand, New York Democrats may be distraught over Bloomberg's victory, but they have no reason to despair over the complexion of his administration. At the new mayor's Election Night party at B.B. King's, the enthusiastic celebrants included a coterie of air-kissing Democrats, from Tina Brown and Harry Evans to Democratic fund-raisers Toni Goodale and Kathy Lacey, who both raised money for Al Gore. "I think of Mike as a Democrat, whether it's a big D or a little d," says Lacey. "His social conscience is high, and he'll be terrific at rebuilding the city."

On Election Night, one local news anchor seemed completely unaware of Bloomberg's broad network of social and political connections when he ominously announced: "We don't know what Mike Bloomberg's relationship will be with Betsy Gotbaum," the Democrat newly elected as public advocate. The implication was that the two might reprise the tortured Mark Green-Rudy Giuliani relationship. But Gotbaum and Bloomberg are long-time friends: He kicked in to her campaign coffers early on, and she was one of his guests at this winter's Inner Circle dinner, hardly the recipe for a thorny government partnership.

"He helped me raise money and he gave me money," says Gotbaum, who sees their current party affiliations as irrelevant. "We are in such trouble in New York that we all need to work together. We don't have to fight."

Since Bloomberg, a lifelong Democrat, changed his registration simply because he thought he'd have a better shot on the GOP line, he's not going to impose party-loyalty tests on his new staff. "This is wartime; it'll be a coalition government," says Maureen Connelly, a Democratic public-relations executive who was Bloomberg's first campaign hire. Adds Doug Schoen, Bloomberg's pollster, "Mike ran as a nonpartisan centrist, and that's how he'll govern."

It's already clear that not all loyalists will get their heart's desire from Hizzoner. Mets pitcher Al Leiter and first-baseman Mark Johnson, who both stumped for Bloomberg, were sipping beers on Election Night at B.B. King's and discussing their own special-interest agenda for a post-Rudy administration. "We've seen enough of those Yankee hats," said Johnson. "We're trying to get Mike to switch colors."

But the day after the election, Ed Skyler, Bloomberg's lanky press spokesman, passed along Leiter and Johnson's sporting request. "I told the mayor, and he said, 'Forget it,' " an exhausted Skyler confessed, laughing, and then added a vital bit of previously unknown Bloomberg information that might have changed the outcome of the campaign had it been revealed earlier. "Mike went to a few Yankees games, but he's not a big baseball fan. His favorite team is the Atlanta Braves." The Atlanta Braves? The Atlanta Braves! Maybe it isn't too late for a recount.

1 | 2