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Mayor Bloomberg has already spent $18.7 million on his re-election campaign, substantially more than he'd spent at this point during his 2005 run. Why so much? Because he just wants to talk. "Every campaign is about engaging voters in a dialogue," said Howard Wolfson, the mayor's spokesperson for his reelection campaign. "This campaign has begun a conversation with New Yorkers about the economy and the mayor's plan to create or save 400,000 jobs." For that kind of money, he could have probably just hired 400,000 people to work at City Hall, but that's another matter. [NYT]