Jack D Hidary

Mr. Hidary, a 44-year-old whose Rolodex brims with the names of fellow attendees at Renaissance Weekends and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is offering himself up as a Bloomberg for the post-Bloomberg era, with a dose of personal charisma and charm the current mayor lacked when he entered politics in 2001. A neuroscience major at Columbia, Mr. Hidary struck it big in the go-go days before the tech bubble burst, founding EarthWeb, a matchmaking business for information industry companies and workers that he and his brother took public in 1998. A few years ago, he paid $2.4 million for an apartment on Central Park South, just west of the Plaza Hotel.