The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
BLOOMBERG LAUNCHING DEMOCRATIC BID FOR 2020
Billionaire says he is running ‘to defeat Donald Trump.’
NEW YORK — Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the world’s richest men, has formally launched a Democratic bid for president.
Ending weeks of speculation, the 77-year-old former Republican announced his candidacy Sunday in a written statement posted on a campaign website describing himself as uniquely positioned to defeat President Donald Trump. He will quickly follow with a massive advertising campaign blanketing airways in key primary states across the U.S.
“I’m running for president to defeat Donald Trump and rebuild America,” Bloomberg wrote.
“We cannot afford four more years of President Trump’s reckless and unethical actions,” he continued. “He represents an existential threat to our country and our values. If he wins another term in office, we may never recover from the damage.”
Bloomberg’s entrance comes 10 weeks before primary voting begins. As a centrist with deep ties to Wall Street, Bloomberg is expected to struggle with the party’s energized progressive base. He became a Democrat again only last year. Yet his tremendous resources and moderate profile could be appealing in a primary contest that has become, above all, a quest for the person best positioned to deny Trump a second term.
Bloomberg has vowed to spend at least $150 million of his fortune on various pieces of a 2020 campaign.
Senior campaign adviser Howard Wolfson said Bloomberg would not accept a single political donation for his campaign or take a salary should he become president.
Before the announcement was final, Democratic rivals like Bernie Sanders pounced on Bloomberg’s plans to rely on his personal fortune. “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,” Sanders tweeted Friday.
Bloomberg has devoted tens of millions of dollars to pursue his policy priorities in recent years, producing measurable progress in cities and states across America. He has helped shutter 282 coal plants in the United States and organized a coalition of American cities on track to cut 75 million metric tons of carbon emissions by 2025.
But Bloomberg is far from a left-wing ideologue. He has declined to embrace Medicare for All as a health care prescription or the “Green New Deal” to combat climate change, favoring a pragmatic approach.
Still, he has endeared himself to many of the nation’s mayors, having made huge investments to help train local officials and encouraging them to take action on climate, guns and immigration in particular.
Ahead of Bloomberg’s announcement, the mayors of Columbia, South Carolina, and Louisville, Kentucky, endorsed him. Despite that show of support from at least one prominent black leader, Bloomberg may have trouble building a multi-racial coalition early on given his turbulent record on race relations in New York.
He plans to bypass the first four states on the primary calendar and focus instead on the many states that vote on Super Tuesday and beyond.
Initially registered as a Democrat, Bloomberg filed paperwork to change his voter registration to Republican in 2000. In June 2007, he left the GOP.