Magic Mike
His $1.8bn gift to Johns Hopkins University this week has fuelled speculation that Michael Bloomberg is set to
EVERYWHERE you go in New York these days you see the impact of Michael Bloomberg and his 12 years as the city’s mayor. The waterfronts of Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan are alive with new parks. Bicycle lanes lace the streets. Once derelict parts of the city have been transformed into huddles of skyscrapers, and technology firms have poured in. Amazon’s decision to build a headquarters in Long Island City can be traced directly to the Bloomberg administration, which kickstarted the new development of this once disregarded district.
Then there is Bloomberg’s private philanthropy, the millions he sluices through the city’s institutions, cultural centres, hospitals and public spaces. And his political contributions: $200 million earlier this year to support American mayors; and $100 million in the mid-term elections in support of Democratic candidates for Congress.
But even by these standards, the $1.8 billion gift he announced this week to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, his alma mater, is staggering in its scale and ambition. Its purpose is to provide aid to more students from middle and low-income families, so they can attend a university where the full annual tuition costs about £42,000. It is pure Bloomberg. His advisers deny any connection but Bloomberg and his allies have been speculating about him running for President in 2018. His Johns Hopkins gift just lifted him out of the pack.
Bloomberg has been frank about his horror at Donald Trump. In a speech at the Democratic convention in 2016 he said of Trump: “I’m a New Yorker. I know a con when I see one.” Since then, Bloomberg has poured money into causes to which Trump has been hostile: climate change, gun control and immigration.
Last month he re-registered as a Democrat, having run for mayor as a Re p u b l i c a n a n d a n independent. Explaining his decision to return to the party of his youth, he said: “At key points in US history, one of the two parties has served as a bulwark against those who threaten our Constitution… We need Democrats to provide the checks and balances our nation so badly needs.”
Shortly before the mid-term elections he released a campaign-style video which implored people to vote for Democrats. Wearing a business suit and speaking softly, Bloomberg criticised the “pointed fingers” and “f e a rmongering” in Washington and called for “calm reasoning” on issues such as immigration. “Americans are neither naive nor heartless,” he said. “We know that we can be a nation of immigrants while also securing our borders.”
For his fans, Bloomberg is the rational, data-driven, non-partisan, problem solver America needs. The kind of New York tycoon who should be in the White House, rather than the one who is.
But Bloomberg has teased before. His success in business, as mayor of New York, and his willingness to spend his fathomless wealth on political campaigns are irresistible to America’s political prognosticators. And he has goaded them, toying with running, commissioning polls and studies to assess his viability as a national candidate and then pulling back.
In 2016 his advisers studied the history of independent candidates who ran for President. They were preparing for a scenario in which Trump won the Republican nomination and Bernie Sanders, the socialist Senator from Vermont, won the Democratic nomination. Bloomberg, then, might have found a wide path down the middle for a centrist. But the Democrats c h o s e Hi llary Clinton and Bloomberg decided he had no shot.
This time he could try to capture the Democratic nomination for himself. He will be 78 i n 2 0 2 0, one of the older candidates. But he is in excellent physical and mental health and his personal wealth and political networks give him a chance to barnstorm the primaries.
But it still seems a long shot. It is hard to imagine Bloomberg electrifying primary voters the way Beto O’Rourke did in Texas his year.
Frank Bruni, The New York Times columnist, wrote that Bloomberg’s mooted candidacy merited an “iota of oxygen” but that he “doesn’t stand a chance. “He has all the va-va-voom of a
ficus tree, all the