Bloomberg drops out of Democratic presidential race after dismal Super Tuesday
Ex-NYC mayor picked up just 12 delegates
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg ended his US presidential campaign on Wednesday and endorsed new Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, whose bid for the White House streaked ahead with a string of electoral victories on “Super Tuesday.”
“A viable path to the nomination no longer exists,” Bloomberg, 78, said in a statement. Endorsing Biden, Bloomberg said: “I will work to make him the next president of the United States.
“I’ve always believed that defeating [President] Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it,” he added. “After yesterday’s vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American, Joe Biden.”
Bloomberg did not say whether he would spend part of his fortune to help Biden, but the media billionaire’s absence from the race will help the former vice president. Both men appeal to the moderate wing of the Democratic Party.
Bloomberg, a media magnate and one of the wealthiest Americans, spent at least $500 million on his campaign, but was not on the ballot for the first several nominating contests, only coming on when 14 states, a territory and Democrats Abroad went to primaries on Tuesday. He picked up just 12 delegates, six of them in American Samoa.
In a tweet addressed to Bloomberg, Biden wrote, “I can’t thank you enough for your support – and for your tireless work on everything from gun safety reform to climate change. This race is bigger than candidates and bigger than politics. It’s about defeating Donald Trump, and with your help, we’re gonna do it.”
Bloomberg dropped out after lavish spending out of his own pocket on campaign ads across the United States failed to deliver convincing results on Tuesday, the biggest day of voting in the Democratic nomination campaign with contests in 14 states.
Since entering the race on November 24, Bloomberg spent freely from the fortune he built on his eponymous financial information company on an ad campaign that vaulted him into the top tier of the Democratic field.
He showed what an avalanche of cash could and could not do.
After Bloomberg blanketed the airwaves with promises that he could defeat the Republican Trump in November, his support among Democrats and independents in public opinion polls rose to around 15% from about 5% when he entered.
He hired thousands of staff and mounted a vigorous national tour focused on the 14 states that voted on Super Tuesday.
But he failed to win much more than 15% of the vote in any state on Tuesday. With counting still under way, Bloomberg’s vote tallies were enough to pick up some delegates to the party’s July convention – in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.
Bloomberg’s campaign was dogged from the start by criticism over his past support of policies seen as racially discriminatory, including stop-andfrisk policing, which ensnared a disproportionate number of African-Americans and Latinos, as well as past sexist remarks.
Bloomberg apologized for stop-and-frisk a few days before he announced his candidacy.
Bloomberg was assailed for his spending despite his pledge to use his personal fortune to support the eventual Democratic nominee, whoever it was.
When Bloomberg got into the race many months after other leading candidates, he said he was worried none of the other candidates could beat Trump.
“Trump would eat ’em up,” he told CBS’s This Morning on December 6. He increasingly pitched himself as the centrist alternative to Sen. Bernie Sanders. In the February 19 debate, he described Sanders’s policies as “communism.”
Bloomberg’s political fortunes initially rose after Biden, who led in public opinion polls during much of 2019, performed poorly in the first three nomination contests: Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.
Bloomberg did not compete in those races, nor in the fourth contest, in South Carolina, saying his late entry made it impossible to assemble a competitive election staff.
Bloomberg heavily criticized Trump, and the two New York billionaires traded insults, with Trump mocking Bloomberg’s short stature on Twitter, nicknaming him “mini-Mike.”
Bloomberg earned his estimated $60 billion fortune by founding Bloomberg LP, a leading purveyor of financial information for Wall Street firms.
In another move that could reshape the race, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 70, is “talking to her team to assess the path forward,” a campaign aide said.
The liberal senator from Massachusetts, who was seeking to become the nation’s first female president, had disappointing results across the board on Tuesday, including coming in third in her home state.
Bloomberg’s departure essentially whittles the race down to two candidates: Biden and Sanders. Sanders and Bloomberg are both Jewish.
Ron Kampeas/JTA contributed to this report.