Michael Bloomberg has now spent more money from his own pocket running for political office than anyone else in US history as he closes in on a third term as the Mayor of New York.

Newly released campaign finance records show that the self-made billionaire, who founded the Bloomberg financial news empire, has spent almost a quarter of a billion dollars in his quest for elected office.

Mr Bloomberg has burned through $85 million (£52 million) so far in his campaign for a third term as Mayor. The total is expected to rise to at least $110 million by election day on November 3.

That is on top of the $74 million price-tag for his narrow first-term victory over Mark Green in 2001 and his $85 million romp over Fernando Ferrer for his second term in 2005.

The mayor, valued at $16 billion, now easily beats the total campaign spending by other plutocrat politicians who have used their own money to run for office, according to figures compiled by The New York Times.

Jon Corzine, the former chairman of Goldman Sachs, now in a tight re-election battle as Governor of New Jersey, has devoted $130 million of his personal fortune to two races for Governor and one for the US Senate.

Steve Forbes, the scion of the business magazine family, spent $114 million on two bids for the presidency.

Ross Perot paid out a total of $75 million for his two independent runs for the White House in 1992 and 1996.

Mr Bloomberg, who engineered a controversial change in the term-limits law to run for a third term as Mayor, defended his astronomical spending at the weekend.

"It costs a lot of money to get a message out and I'm trying to show what we've done and tell people," Mr Bloomberg said.

"It's very difficult to get people to know in a city this size the breadth of the things we've done. I'm trying to reach out to every single community."

Mr Bloomberg was a lifelong Democrat who became a Republican to run for office, then left the party, but is now again running as a Republican.

He enjoys a comfortable 16-point lead over his Democratic opponent, William Thompson, even though New York is an overwhelmingly Democratic city.

The New York Times, the New York Post and the New York Daily News have all endorsed his re-election. "In his eight years in office, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has managed to make the unpredictable city of New York work astonishingly well," the New York Times said.

Mr Bloomberg is nevertheless outspending Mr Thompson, who has paid out a modest $6.6 million in private contributions and public matching funds, by an eye-popping 14-to-1.

Most of Mr Bloomberg's funds go to blanket television and radio with campaign ads. But his campaign also reports spending $322,521 on food, including $8,892 worth of pizza from the Goodfellas Brick Oven Pizza.

Mr Thompson, the city comptroller, has repeatedly denounced Mr Bloomberg's spending as "obscene".

"He's worried about my candidacy — or you have to believe he's trying to get the people of New York to forget about his record, and that's why he's spending this amount of money," Mr Thompson said on the campaign trail in Harlem this weekend.

The Thompson campaign is trying to compete the old-fashioned way by sticking up posters on lampposts. But the tactic has backfired as it has been ticketed 1,677 times for illegally posting flyers on city property and been fined $126,000. The Bloomberg campaign has got just 70 tickets so far.

Mr Thompson, who is black, is hoping for a boost from a photo-op last week with President Barack Obama.

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