Metro

RSVP to me, Mayor Mike!

He’s not just the richest New Yorker — Mayor Bloomberg is also the most popular.

From embossed invites to attend the Dalai Lama’s birthday party to e-mail requests to dine at red-sauce restaurants in Staten Island, Hizzoner received 1,963 personal invitations to events in the past two months.

He hit only 45 of them — accepting an invite to chow down at Bocelli Restaurant on Hylan Boulevard and rejecting His Holiness’ invite to celebrate at Tibet House in the West Village.

“New Yorkers enjoy a kind of visceral contact with the mayor,” said NYU professor Mitchell Moss, a former Bloomberg adviser. “People invite him to events hoping he’ll sprinkle holy water. Having the mayor there leans credibility to any endeavor.”

His scheduler and senior adviser, Shea Fink, reviews all the invites.

“We’ve gotten more hundredth-birthday invitations than you probably think there are 100-year-olds in the city,” Fink told The Post.

As for slighting the Dalai Lama, Bloomy’s office said the mayor was attending the Sun Valley, Idaho, media-mogul conference that night.

“We sent a personal letter,” Fink said.

“I wish I had two or three mayors to run around.”

Bloomberg’s schedule is set every morning at his staff meeting at City Hall or Gracie Mansion.

“We set him up for the day and talk through anything that’s come up over night,” Fink said. “We run him around a lot. Generally, he doesn’t get back home until 9:30 or 10 p.m.”

Because of the quantity of invites, a large part of Fink’s job is saying “no.”

Bloomberg declined an invitation to spend the evening of June 14 with Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony at the Apollo Theater’s Annual Spring Benefit. Instead, he attended a party for a departing staffer.

Gloria and Bob Hacken requested that the mayor renew their wedding vows at Gargiulos Restaurant in Coney Island on April 11. The invite ended up in Fink’s “decline” pile.

And Bloomberg chose not to participate in a rally to protest the cancellation of the soap opera “As the World Turns.”

But on a whim, he agreed to meet with Staten Island fifth-grader Nicholas Chin, who had written to City Hall requesting a meeting as part of a campaign to be class president at PS 54.

Bloomy has a thing for requests from kids.

Last month, Councilman Dominic Recchia’s three daughters wrote the mayor asking if he would pose for a picture with them and a cardboard cutout of Flat Stanley, a children’s-book character who has become an Internet sensation.

He agreed to do it.

“The craziest part of being mayor is that nobody defers to you,” Moss said.

“The president or the governor comes, and they’re treated like royalty. But with the mayor, people think you’re there to make sure the potholes are filled.

“Whether they’re complaining about problems with bus stops or bike lanes, there’s a genuine sense that he’s there to work for them.”

akarni@nypost.com