Another presidential election, another never-been-seen-before type candidate.
Four years ago it was Donald Trump. Never had there been a candidate make a serious run for president with exactly no prior political or military experience. Donald Trump burst upon the scene with a resume that included a long run as a New York City real estate magnate and an exceptionally successful run as a reality TV star. Oh, and he was very rich.
Few took Donald Trump seriously.
Now along comes another New York City icon. Michael Bloomberg served as mayor of New York for 12 years. His media empire has made him exceptionally wealthy. Forbes estimates his net worth at something just over $60 billion.
At first, few experts took Michael Bloomberg’s very late announcement as a candidate seriously either. He has so far done none of the traditional things that presidential candidates do. He deliberately avoided the early primary and caucus states, preferring to concentrate his efforts on the March 3 Super Tuesday states, which include Texas.
Bloomberg is funding his campaign 100 percent out of his pocket. So far, he has spent $400 million on TV ads. He is spending a million a day on Facebook.
And it seems to be working. Until very recently, Bloomberg’s poll numbers were in the low single digits – insufficient to qualify him for the scheduled Democratic debates. That changed this week. Multiple polls now have him at 20 percent – enough to get him on the debate stage in Nevada tonight (after the Democratic National Committee killed the rule about the number of individual donors a candidate must have. Bloomberg has exactly none. He isn’t taking donations).
Frontrunner Bernie Sanders is – not without justification – complaining bitterly about the rule change.
Bloomberg, like Trump before him, has audio tape in his past that could hurt him. Speaking to the Aspen Institute in 2015, he said this about New York’s stop and frisk policy that critics complained targeted minorities.
Ninety five percent of your murderers – murderers and murder victims – fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox I and pass it out to all the cops. They are male minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city. And, that’s where the real crime is. You’ve gotta get the guns out of the hands of the people that are getting killed. You want to spend the money on a lot of cops in the streets. Put those cops where the crime is, which means in minority neighborhoods. So, one of the unintended consequences is people say, ‘Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana that are all minorities.’ Yes, that’s true. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the walls and frisk them.”
Expect to hear pieces of that clip a lot in the coming weeks.
So, the question before voters is two-fold. Can personal wealth buy you the presidency? And if so, what does it mean for the republic?