- Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg announced on Sunday that he running for president by entering the Democratic Primary
Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg announced on Sunday that he is entering the Democratic Primary in order to defeat Donald Trump. Mike Bloomberg previously considered running as an independent and was previously a Republican.
Mike Bloomberg is also known as the co-founder of Everytown for Gun Safety and strongly advocates a focus on climate change initiatives.
Mike Bloomberg had served as mayor of New York between 2002 through 2013. Mike Bloomberg’s successor as mayor Bill de Blasio attempted to run for president but dropped out.
To promote his campaign, Mike Bloomberg reportedly spent $30 million in airtime for TV ads according to The New York Times. This means that Mike Bloomberg spent more than all of the Democratic candidates have spent all year. These 60-second biographical ads will run next week in at least 29 states.
To run an online campaign, Mike Bloomberg hired Gary Briggs as a digital director of the Mike Bloomberg 2020 campaign. Briggs is the former CMO of Facebook. It is rumored that Mike Bloomberg plans to spend over $500 million total on the 2020 cycle for digital ads alone.
Briggs is not the only former Silicon Valley tech executive that is working on a digital campaign. Former Google.org executive Head of Global Development Initiatives Sonal Shah is currently working as the National Policy Director for Pete for America (Pete Buttigieg).
“I’m disgusted by the idea that Michael Bloomberg or any billionaire thinks they can circumvent the political process and spend tens of millions of dollars to buy elections,” wrote Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders in a tweet as a response to Mike Bloomberg’s TV ad spend. “If you can’t build grassroots support for your candidacy, you have no business running for president.”
With a net worth of about $52 billion, Bloomberg generated most of his wealth as the CEO of Bloomberg L.P — which is a financial services and media company that he launched in the 1980s. Mike Bloomberg is still the majority owner of the private media company — which runs Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Television, and Bloomberg Professional Service.
Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait said that the media company would not investigate Mike Bloomberg or his Democratic rivals during the presidential campaign. This means avoiding the investigation of the personal lives and finances of Bloomberg and the other Democratic candidates while they are campaigning.
“So Mike is running,” wrote Micklethwait. “There is no point in trying to claim that covering this presidential campaign will be easy for a newsroom that has built up its reputation for independence in part by not writing about ourselves (and very rarely about our direct competitors). No previous presidential candidate has owned a journalistic organization of this size.”
The Bloomberg media company will also stop publishing unsigned Bloomberg Opinion editorials as it could be shaped by the views of Bloomberg News and Bloomberg’s personal positions. Bloomberg Opinion executive editors David Shipley and Tim O’Brien are going to take a leave of absence and join Mike Bloomberg’s campaign.
Mike Bloomberg said that he is refusing political donations and would not accept the $400,000 presidential salary if he won the election. And Bloomberg Philanthropies Senior Advisor Howard Wolfson told The Associated Press that Mike Bloomberg never took a political contribution in his life and “cannot be bought.”
Here is a video that the Mike Bloomberg 2020 campaign published on Sunday:
