Bloomberg endorses Obama (Updated)

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, whose city is still partially submerged, without power and facing a rising death toll from Hurricane Sandy, endorses President Obama, via the Twitters:

And if anyone is wondering what message Bloomberg, who had for months signaled he would stay out of the presidential race, is sending with this endorsement, click here. The endorsement moves climate change front and center in a way that the mayor, who endorses based on specific issues, clearly wants it to be.

Bloomberg has been critical of Obama in the past and declined to have Obama come visit New York — the president went to New Jersey, instead. But as the endorsement makes clear, that was not a diss. And the endorsement of the mayor, a business leader, is one that Obama and Mitt Romney had both sought.

UPDATE: Bloomberg lays out his case here on his political website, in which he argues that Sandy exemplifies the climate change issue:

But we can't do it alone. We need leadership from the White House — and over the past four years, President Barack Obama has taken major steps to reduce our carbon consumption, including setting higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks. His administration also has adopted tighter controls on mercury emissions, which will help to close the dirtiest coal power plants (an effort I have supported through my philanthropy), which are estimated to kill 13,000 Americans a year. Mitt Romney, too, has a history of tackling climate change. As governor of Massachusetts, he signed on to a regional cap-and-trade plan designed to reduce carbon emissions 10 percent below 1990 levels. "The benefits (of that plan) will be long-lasting and enormous — benefits to our health, our economy, our quality of life, our very landscape. These are actions we can and must take now, if we are to have `no regrets' when we transfer our temporary stewardship of this Earth to the next generation," he wrote at the time. He couldn't have been more right. But since then, he has reversed course, abandoning the very cap-and-trade program he once supported. This issue is too important. We need determined leadership at the national level to move the nation and the world forward. I believe Mitt Romney is a good and decent man, and he would bring valuable business experience to the Oval Office. He understands that America was built on the promise of equal opportunity, not equal results. In the past he has also taken sensible positions on immigration, illegal guns, abortion rights and health care. But he has reversed course on all of them, and is even running against the health-care model he signed into law in Massachusetts.

That last point, about Romney having "reversed course on all of" his past "sensible" positions, is at the heart of Obama's argument against Romney right now.

Bloomberg has gotten more engaged in electoral politics in the past few weeks, using his firtune to fund a super PAC that senior adviser and current on-leave Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson is running.

Bloomberg is not a swing-state pull. But coupled with the warm words from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose state was similarly battered by the storm, Obama has had two days in which the cable news focus is going to be on the storm and on testimonials about him.

Maggie Haberman is senior political reporter for Politico.