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From the mayor's new campaign web site.

Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign manager, Bradley Tusk, sent out a letter to likely supporters today listing the reasons they’ll probably want to vote Bloomberg into a third term. Number two on the list was education.

The key excerpt, bolded by me, not Tusk:

Mike Bloomberg’s record speaks for itself. New York City has never been safer – crime is down nearly 30% since he took office. Mike took control of the public school system and now test scores and graduation rates are on the rise, while the achievement gap is shrinking. Quality of life has improved across the five boroughs, our streets are cleaner than ever, and new parks are being created all across the city. And Mike has a nine-point economic plan that will create and retain 400,000 jobs in New York.

One other thing of note: As he shifts into campaign mode, the mayor is signaling a new preference for how to be addressed. It’s not Mr. Bloomberg or Hizzoner. It’s Mike, just Mike, please. I guess that’s one way to make a multi-billionaire feel a little more accessible (though not technologically accessible, says Sewell Chan).

Comptroller William Thompson Jr. with Randi Weingarten (via Flickr)

Could we be seeing the start of a campaign theme?

William Thompson Jr., the city’s comptroller and a likely mayoral candidate, today attacked the Department of Education for transportation policies that he said are marred by “confusion and mismanagement.” In a letter to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, he called on the department to launch an immediate review of its transportation policies.

The attack was a response to a Daily News report that a 3-year-old autistic boy had been left alone on a school bus for more than six hours. But it might foreshadow a longer argument to come establishing Thompson’s education credentials against Mayor Bloomberg. Thompson is certainly not the first person to criticize the Department of Education for “confusion and mismanagement,” and one of the groups that often sounds that theme, the teachers union, is close to Thompson.

The comptroller himself has privately directed similar complaints on the “mismanagement” theme toward non-transportation-related DOE policies. In transcripts of his private testimony to a commission on school governance that I obtained, Thompson complained that he has difficulty tracking the education department’s spending.

“If you look at the lack of financial and fiscal transparency at the Department of Education, it is astonishing,” Mr. Thompson said.

In short, if Thompson is looking for an education argument against another likely mayoral candidate, Mayor Bloomberg, he might have found one.

The press release summarizing Thompson’s complaints about the busing problem is after the jump. (more…)