It seemed improbable that there would ever be a better tidbit about Sharon E. Baum, Corcoran Group senior vice president, than the one in Steven Gaines’ book The Sky’s the Limit recounting that she kept a bottle of Grey Poupon in her "chauffeur-driven, butter-colored Bentley."
But then came this week’s Newsweek cover story on Mayor Bloomberg’s ’08 plan:
Sharon Baum met Bloomberg at a Harvard Business School alumni function (Baum had graduated from Harvard a year before, one of seven women in her class) shortly after he moved to New York. They dated casually. Even in his youth, Bloomberg had a tendency toward grand gestures. On the day Baum married another man in 1969, Bloomberg sent her a dozen long-stem roses with a card: ‘I wish you all the happiness in the world.’
That is so romantic.
But it gets better!
She complimented him on the pictures she’d seen of him walking with commuters across the Brooklyn Bridge. ‘You looked really great coming across the bridge,’ she said. ‘But where was your hat?’ Bloomberg grimaced. ‘Ugh, you and my mother.’ Then she changed the subject. ‘Why aren’t you running for president?’ she pestered. The mayor’s response was the same: ‘Ugh, you and my mother.’
