Bloomberg advisers defend 'rear-guard action' money spent after Biden loses Ohio, Florida and Texas
Bloomberg shelled out more than $100 million in states Trump ended up winning
Mike Bloomberg didn’t get the best return on his investment to help Democratic nominee Joe Biden win key battleground states in the presidential election.
But the former New York City mayor’s top political advisers say the money the billionaire business and media mogul spent on behalf of the Democratic presidential nominee in Florida, Ohio, and Texas freed up the Biden campaign to win other key swing states.
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“Our singular goal was electing Joe Biden,” senior Bloomberg adviser Howard Wolfson told Fox News. “We believe that Joe Biden is going to be the next president and we believe that we were successful in terms of our efforts to help him.”
Bloomberg, who shelled out $1 billion from his coffers on his own unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this year, spent more than $100 million in the general election to help Biden in Florida from September through this week’s election, and in Texas and Ohio in the closing weeks of the campaign. But President Trump ended up winning Florida by 3.3 points, Texas – at last count – by 5.8 points, and Ohio by roughly 8 points.
While some pundits see the investments by Bloomberg – most of which were funneled through his Independence USA super PAC – as a waste of money, his advisers disagree.
"As we said from the start, we didn’t get into Florida because it was cheap, easy, or a must-win state. We got in to run a rear-guard action against Trump and to force him to defend his home state with his time, attention and resources,” Bloomberg senior adviser Kevin Sheekey explained.
“If we won Florida, we hoped to avoid Trump's predictable attacks on mail-in ballots around the nation, but being in Florida regardless allowed Democrats to free up necessary resources to win other key battleground states in the Midwest,” Sheekey emphasized.
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In the 2018 midterms, Bloomberg’s efforts were a contributing factor in helping the Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives. Bloomberg aides highlight that 21 of the 24 House races Bloomberg weighed into in 2018 flipped to the Democrats.
Bloomberg once again made a major investment this year to help House Democrats. But the party’s hopes to pick up 10-15 seats and pad their majority didn’t pan out, with the Republicans instead making gains.
Yet Wolfson told Fox News that, “given how close some of the House races turned out to be in Trump districts, Mike’s contribution was critical in holding the majority…I got to believe that if Mike had not done what he did, the results might have been worse.”
Bloomberg – a major advocate for over a decade in the fights to combat climate change and stem gun violence – has spent hundreds of millions of his own money on behalf of those causes. And his top advisers say that will continue.
“His overriding issue focus has really been around the environment, around gun safety, and around public health,” Sheekey said. And he stressed that “Bloomberg is not running out of money or the will to fight for the issues he believes in.”
Wolfson spotlighted that “Mike now has a decade long track record as someone who is highly involved in American politics….I expect that's going to continue. It's not, not our first time at the dance and will not be our last time.”