Aboard Bloomberg bus: Droll wit, swag, Texas-size ambition
DALLAS >> Mike Bloomberg isn’t going to be the loudest campaigner in the Democratic primary contest, and he’s not planning to spend time talking about his rivals. With the first votes just weeks away, he acts more like he’s running in a general election than a primary.
While the top Democratic candidates campaigned in Iowa and Nevada this weekend, Bloomberg was on a five-stop bus tour Saturday of reliably Republican Texas, which doesn’t vote until March 3. The only rival he spoke about was President Donald Trump, and he talked about Texas as a battleground in November rather than a soon-to-be-voting primary state.
The Texas tour was an early touch-the-flesh foray for Bloomberg, who is trying to reach voters with hundreds of millions of dollars in television and digital advertising as he tries to rewrite the playbook of running for president. While other candidates have sought to prove themselves in the quaint retail politics of traditional starting states, Bloomberg’s approach is decidedly wholesale, with a focus on large states with far more delegates at stake.
As for his fellow Democrats, Bloomberg said he welcomes any criticism they want to throw his way. He didn’t mention anyone by name, but Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in particular have hit him for being a billionaire — he has an estimated worth of more than $50 billion — who can self-fund his campaign with essentially an unlimited budget.
“Why are they giving me free publicity?” Bloomberg said in an Associated Press interview on his campaign bus. “They’re making the public think that I’m a real candidate, that they’re really worried about it and I’m a real threat. And the public says, ‘Oh, if he’s that good, maybe we should think about him, too.’ Thank you very much.”
That droll demeanor is not the stuff of the Iowa State Fair soapbox, but few things about Bloomberg’s campaign are typical. He entered the race in late November, months after saying he wouldn’t run. He figured it was too late to mount serious campaigns in the first four voting states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — so he’s skipping them entirely to focus on the 14 states that vote on Super Tuesday, including delegate-rich Texas and California, when about a third of Democratic delegates will be awarded.
The former mayor of New York, whose fortune flows from his financial data and media company, is not accepting campaign contributions, which means he can’t participate in the Democratic debates. He is not holding town-hall style events where voters can ask him questions or hosting large rallies with thousands of adoring fans, as some of his rivals have been doing for months.
“I’m not Bernie Sanders ... or Elizabeth Warren and yelling and screaming with 25,000 people in front of me. I’m just not comfortable doing that, that’s not my strength,” Bloomberg told the AP, adding that he would do so as the campaign goes on. “Today was a decentsized crowd. I can look, and I can see the people, and I can relate to them. Do I connect with them? Well, that’s what you’re going to find out when the primary hits.”