By Azi Paybarah

When Queens Councilman Joseph Addabbo picked up the phone late Friday afternoon, he was asked whether he was seriously planning a race to oust an 18-year incumbent Republican from the state senate, and tip that house a little closer into the hands of Democrats for the first time since the mid 1960s.

Addabbo’s face, with its pencil-thin mustache, stretched into a smile. 

Addabbo, the son of a popular Queens congressman run had never dreamt of leaving public office when his term in the city council expired in 2009. A seat in the state senate would be an ideal fit for his master plan: another Congressman Addabbo. 

Two weeks earlier, in what Addabbo said was an unrelated maneuver, his longtime chief of staff left to manage Queens Community Board 6. That board sits outside Addabbo’s Howard Beach district and, wouldn’t you know,  is a few squiggly lines away from the heart of Senator Serphin Maltese’s turf. Hmm.

But the caller that afternoon, a New York Times reporter, wasn’t asking about that. The reporter just spoke to some high-ranking Bloomberg official and wanted to know about the exploratory committee that was “secretly set up.” Addabbo had indeed established one. And yes, Addabbo said, it was exploring which seat he would run for next. In fact, as they spoke, the committee was raising money, studying election results, examining census figures and sending out feelers to see if this would the year. 

But this wasn’t something new. In fact, they’ve done that every year since he took office in 2002, Addabbo told me. And whoever it was in Bloomberg’s office that tipped off this reporter—and said the mayor was ready to unleash his personal fortune to help in the effort—apparently didn’t make one important call. 

“I haven’t even spoken to the mayor’s people yet,” Addabbo said Monday evening. “They have not called me…the way I found out about it was through my consultant, the Advance Group. They spoke. Never the mayor’s office and me.”

“The rumor mill in politics,” he said, “works everyday.”

Churning that mill, most suspect, is Kevin Sheekey, Bloomberg’s political compass and newly minted Deputy Mayor for, get this, Intergovernmental Affairs. The ‘Addabbo for Senate’ leak is as intergovernmental as you get.

The life-long Democrat turned Republican never really had a honeymoon with his Grand Old Party. Sure he’s written checks to Republicans in New York and to the National Republican Committee, but one of the good old boys he never was. Even when the entire National Republican Party nominated George Bush at Madison Square Garden, Bloomberg never got permanently labeled, well, a Republican. But when Mike’s Democratic opponent reminded everyone Bloomberg was a Republican, it simply didn’t register. 

And for good reason. For four years, Bloomberg promised to be “independent” and “beholden to no one.” In fact, the only thing the $5 billion political neophyte needed was one lousy, but major, political line to run on in 2001. For sale: one Republican ballot line. The price: $70 million (consultants included). Now that he’s a lame duck mayor, Bloomberg doesn’t need the party he bought. But they can’t afford to lose him.

Chances of Democrats controlling every statewide office, plus the governor’s mansion and the Assembly are getting better every day. And with a 35-26 majority in the state senate, that last bastion of Republicanism could disappear too.

Bloomberg’s threat to oust one of those Republican senators fulfils—and also breaks— Bloomberg’s contract with New York.

“I am not a politician,” he told the City. He doesn’t make political decisions. But as a rich-lame-duck mayor with a few scores to settle, all bets are off. He’s attacking a 73-year-old Republican senator who, coincidentally, endorsed the mayor’s rival Republican during the primaries. Another Republican senator from Queens, Frank Padavan, backed the mayor. He apparently is in the clear. The head of the Senate Majority, Republican Joe Bruno, helped squash the mayor’s dream of building a West Side stadium to lure the Olympics. The 76-year-old former boxer and gun enthusiast will be an overnight has-been once Democrats take over. Then, maybe, he’d finally retire.

Whether Bloomberg is aiming at Maltese or Bruno doesn’t matter. That seat is one of the linchpins in state politics. Threatening Maltese is enough to leverage what four years of polite asking hasn’t produced.

Held up in Albany are Gotham’s wish list: $5 billion in court-ordered school funding; reform of the over-generous pension plans for municipal employees; a sweep of the corruption-plagued public authorities, just to name a few. 

Finally, Bloomberg is living up to the promise that only a $5 billion politician can make. To pour his money to break political log jams. What lawmaker in Albany would stand in the Mayor’s way knowing that one check from Bloomberg could instantly fund a challenger (and probably cover the of the inauguration too).

Whether Addabbo’s personal ambition fit conveniently into the mayor’s newfound political playbook doesn’t’ matter. The fact that the billionaire is finally using plays from that book is.