Black support grows for Bloomberg as Biden falters
WASHINGTON – In 2013, the last year of former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s tenure, Rep. Gregory Meeks, a Democrat who represents parts of Queens in New York City, said the Bloomberg administration’s stopand-frisk policy was “illegal” and “attacks on our communities.”
But in 2020, Meeks, D-N.Y., endorsed Bloomberg for president, a day after a video of Bloomberg’s past remarks defending the practice, which had disproportionately affected racial minorities, ricocheted around the internet.
In a brief interview with USA TODAY, Meeks said he accepted Bloomberg’s apology for what the congressman called “bad policy” that was “just trying to save lives.”
“I know you’re just trying to save lives, but it was in a bad way, right, and ultimately he realized it, and he’s apologized for it,” he said.
The Bloomberg campaign is waging an effort to engage black voters despite past controversies about race and criminal justice that critics have slammed as racist and disqualifying for higher office. Meeks’ endorsement, and that of several other black lawmakers, suggest Bloomberg can change minds, something he’ll need if he wants to win the Democratic nomination.
Other than former Vice President Joe Biden, most of the other Democratic presidential candidates have struggled to garner support from black voters – a crucial voter base for election.
Biden has the endorsement of 18 members of the influential Congressional Black Caucus, a coalition of African American members of the House and Senate. But he has faltered after disappointing finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, and polling has shown declining levels of support among black voters.
That presents an opportunity for Bloomberg, whose four CBC endorsements are more than any other Democratic candidate in the race aside from Biden. Plus, in FiveThirtyEight’s average of national presidential polls, Bloomberg sits in third place, behind Sanders and Biden, even though Americans won’t be able to cast votes for Bloomberg until Super Tuesday, on March 3.
Responding to past criticism
Bloomberg’s African American supporters were put to the test Tuesday when resurfaced video showed Bloomberg giving a candid defense of stopand-frisk.
“We put all the cops in minority neighborhoods,” Bloomberg said in the video. “Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is.”
As the video circulated online, it was amplified by a later-deleted tweet from President Donald Trump, who called Bloomberg a racist. Despite the attack, Trump defended the practice as a candidate in 2016.
The Bloomberg campaign released a statement following a meeting with over a dozen African American faith leaders defending the former mayor.
“While Donald Trump was calling Mike Bloomberg a racist, Mike was continuing his conversation with AfricanAmerican clergy from around the country,” the faith leaders said, citing Bloomberg’s “regret” over policies like stopand-frisk, a program where officers routinely stopped and searched mostly black and Hispanic men for weapons.
On Thursday, Bloomberg rolled out a 26-state ad buy in network, cable and local markets about his support for black-owned businesses as mayor of New York. And later that day, he unveiled “Mike for Black America” in Houston, alongside a group of a dozen black mayors, including the city’s mayor, Sylvester Turner.
In his speech announcing the initiativeoters, Bloomberg apologized again for stop-and-frisk, telling the crowd, “I know I can’t change history. But what I can do is learn from my mistakes – and use those lessons to do right by black and brown communities who have suffered.”
Despite the controversy over the past comments, Khalilah Brown-Dean, associate professor of political science at Quinnipiac University, told USA TODAY Bloomberg’s efforts showed “outreach” to black communities, something she thought was important.
Brown-Dean said Bloomberg had been successful in obtaining endorsements of current and former black mayors, including standouts like former New Haven, Connecticut, Mayor Toni Harp, who had been the city’s first black female mayor and the president of the African American Mayors Association.
But just as Bloomberg’s supporters tried to steer their way out of the stopand-frisk controversy, more Bloomberg comments would emerge.
On Thursday, the AP reported on Bloomberg’s remarks at a 2008 Georgetown University forum where he had said the end of redlining, or the discriminatory refusal of some insurance or mortgage companies to lend or insure homes to racial minorities, had contributed to the 2008 economic collapse.
At a campaign event in Arlington, Va., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., told her supporters “that crisis would not have been averted if the banks had been able to be bigger racists, and anyone who thinks that should not be the leader of our party.”
Appearing on MSNBC on Saturday, Meeks said Bloomberg used a poor choice of language in his comments about redlining but was referring to the correct issue.