NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg

You gotta hand it to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He royally pisses the voting public off with his term limits power grab but they still lovvvvve him.

That’s what a new Quinnipiac Poll out Tuesday seems to suggest. By a margin of 56% to 42% NYC voters disapprove of the term limit extension Bloomberg and the City Council pushed through for themselves last year. So that’s bad news for Bloomy, right? Of course not!

A big majority of those same voters say they not only want Bloomberg to run but that they’ll vote for him over two potential Democratic opponents. Bloomberg beats Anthony Weiner or Bill Thompson by almost identical double-digit margins (50-35 and 50-34 respectively).

While a NY1 Poll puts the Bloomberg-Weiner match much closer both polls show Bloomberg with a very high approval rating (64-29 in NY1 Poll and 69-25 in Q) that makes a mockery of the notion that at this early stage there’s a real race for Mayor.

Bloomberg will spend tens of millions more than whichever Democrat emerges to challenge him and voters don’t mind that either. Quinnipiac asked if voters thought Bloomberg bankrolling his own campaign A) freed him from being beholden to special interests or B) made it look like he was trying to buy the election. By a margin of 54-40 voters chose the “freed from special interests” line. Big smiles all around Camp Bloomy.

The bottom line is that with these poll numbers, more money to spend per vote than any candidate in history, and a top team of hired guns (including part of Obama’s micro-targeting group that so successfully ushered in the new era of get out the vote operations) Bloomberg has very little going against him.

Anthony Weiner would certainly make a fiery opponent and would likely connect with some disaffected blue-collar voters angry about the economy. But it’s hard to see how that’s enough to overcome Bloomberg’s huge advantages. If voters don’t dislike Bloomberg right now with term limits fresh on their minds what’s going to make them learn to dislike him later?

Thompson’s run would be different and potentially more effective if he could mount a real grass-roots rebellion among African American and Latino voters but what’s going to fuel that other than class resentment (which is Weiner’s theme)? And when has Thompson shown he can or will run that kind of contest?

So Boss Bloomberg should sleep soundly tonight knowing that less than ten months from election day there are virtually no signs that his chances of winning a third term are anything but golden.