Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg thinks that being able to serve three terms in office is a good idea — just not for anyone else.

On Monday, in an unexpected confession, Mr. Bloomberg said he wanted to reverse the changes to the city’s term-limits law, which he successfully campaigned for in 2008. Those changes are now the subject of a little-publicized ballot initiative on Election Day.

The mayor said he would vote to restore a limit of two terms, down from three, and to ban the City Council from rewriting the rule for sitting elected officials, closing a legislative loophole that Mr. Bloomberg exploited in his quest to remain in office beyond eight years. The results of the ballot initiative would not affect Mr. Bloomberg, but would affect his successors.

During a news conference, the mayor said that the term-limits initiative, which will appear on the back of the paper ballots on Nov. 2, was imperfect and badly designed, but that he would support it anyway.

“It’s better than what we have now,” Mr. Bloomberg said, without explaining why or acknowledging that his administration had written the existing law and heavily advocated for it.

It was the latest installment in the story of Mr. Bloomberg’s ever-evolving relationship with term limits. An outspoken supporter of two terms, he once called Council members who proposed extending them “disgraceful.” Then, as his own time in office wound down, he reversed himself and advocated for three terms, saying they offered voters greater choice.

“You can make that case for two terms or three terms,” he said at the time. “In this case, after listening to everybody, I’ve been convinced that three terms is right.”

Now he seems to have settled on something of a compromise: three terms for him, and only him.

Mayoral allies pointed out that Mr. Bloomberg had kept his word by bringing the issue back to voters, who originally passed the two-term limit in a 1993 referendum, only to watch it be dismantled by the mayor and the Council.

Mr. Bloomberg’s sudden support for two terms puts him in line with most New Yorkers. A New York Times poll, conducted in August, found that nearly three-fourths of city voters favored undoing Mr. Bloomberg’s 2008 actions.

The mayor’s change of opinion will avert a showdown with a fellow billionaire, Ronald S. Lauder, the father of the city’s original 1993 law, who has opened his wallet to sponsor a commercial urging New Yorkers to vote for a return to two terms.

The advertisement, which will be broadcast over the next few days, instructs voters — with a wry tagline — to turn over their ballots to find the term-limits question and vote yes. “Flip over the ballot,” a narrator says, “and flip off the politicians.”

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(Source: NY Times)