By Edward-Isaac Dovere

Karin Gallet has been convening the members of Draft Bloomberg for months on Tuesday evenings at the Old Town Bar on East 18th Street. A health care administrator with no previous political experience but a deep admiration of the mayor, Gallet says she ‘s getting help from political professionals taking pity on her. They have launched a website, www.Bloomberg08nyc.com, and registered an accompanying Political Action Committee with the Federal Elections Commission. They’re scouting spots for a fundraiser.  She organizes the volunteers to show up at Bloomberg’s public events with signs encouraging him to run, and even to wait outside the WABC studios where he broadcasts his weekly radio show, to demonstrate the strength of his support.

“Our main goal is to make our presence known, show ourselves to the mayor and not get arrested,” Gallet says. 

Gallet advises the group on how to make supportive comments on political blogs and is coordinating a letter-writing campaign to encourage Bloomberg to run. Sample letters are available on the group’s website, she told the six people who gathered for their October 2 meeting. Encouraging them to spread the word, she dangles a prize in front of them: she expects to be able to personally deliver the letters to Bloomberg in City Hall’s Blue Room, and says the top three letter collectors will get to join her.

“It’s not going to matter if it’s a hundred,” Gallet says. “It’s not going to matter if it’s a thousand. It’s only going to matter if it’s several thousand.”

Gallet and the others in the group have  considered every eventuality, every possible scenario that favors or hobbles the prospects of a Bloomberg for president campaign. “We can’t have a president who is shacking up with his girlfriend,” she says, referring to the fact that Bloomberg shares his East 79th Street townhouse with his companion, Diana Taylor. “I believe there is a quiet wedding by the end of the year, or at least a quiet engagement. That, to me, is the strongest indication that he’s running.”

She says the mayor’s staff is happy to have them making the push.

“They clearly are supportive in spirit, even if they can’t do it actively,”  Gallet says of he Bloomberg administration staff.

“No one ever says, ‘You should give it up.’”

And although she won’t name names, she says she is in reasonably regular contact with “someone who’s not in Kevin Sheekey’s circle, but in the next circle out.”

 Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser denies that anyone from City Hall is in contact with Gallet or the Draft Bloomberg effort. Loeser did, however, acknowledge that standing on the street after Bloomberg appeared at Cooper Union September 25, chief Bloomberg presidential prospect promoter Sheekey recognized Gallet’s picture from her Facebook page and introduced her to the mayor for their first-ever meeting. But that  is the extent of the contact, Loeser says.

Still,, Gallet and others whisper about the help they have been getting, claiming that efforts are being coordinated from within the Bloomberg camp. There are rumors of consultants who worked with Bloomberg in the past effectively placing themselves on hold for the presidential race, still waiting to hear whether he will make the race. But they guard the details very closely.

Loeser says that while all the talk was flattering and understandable, and while Sheekey continues to speak about his hopes that Bloomberg will run, neither the mayor nor anyone else in his administration has anything to do with the effort.  As for the involvement of advisors and supporters who used to work for the mayor but no longer do, Loeser says he could not speak for them.

“It’s not surprising that people who worked to build the largest and broadest coalition in New York history are still supportive of the mayor,” Loeser says, “and some of them are going to be involved with Draft Bloomberg.”