LOS ANGELES — Michael Bloomberg’s Super Tuesday strategy to yank the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination from candidates who’ve been campaigning for almost a year hinges on California.
The former New York City mayor announced his bid to become the Democratic Party’s next standard-bearer in November, despite only re-registering with the party in 2018 after almost two decades as a Republican and then an independent. But the billionaire media mogul and philanthropist, 77, has one major advantage as he traverses the state known for its tricky political terrain: money.
Forgoing traditional ground games in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, Bloomberg’s hoping his national profile as a post-Sept. 11 New York City chief executive who’s invested millions of dollars into Democratic candidates and causes, such as gun control and environmental conservation, will help him scoop up a sizable portion of California’s more than 400 delegates before polls close on March 3.
At the same time, he’s blanketing California’s airwaves with ads promoting himself as the ideal challenger to President Trump next year, who he believes “is getting stronger.”
Since 1972, California has rejected a “winner take all” primary delegate selection model. That presents plenty of opportunities for members of the 15-person 2020 field to earn a sliver of the total delegate count if they register more than 15% of the popular vote in any of the state’s 53 congressional districts, according to Democratic strategist Nathan Ballard. However, it comes at a cost.
“It is such a vast state. It’s so diverse geographically, ethnically, and economically that there is only one way to guarantee a victory in California, and that is to dominate the airwaves. That means buying airtime in Los Angeles and San Francisco, two of the most expensive media markets in the country. And it also means reaching voters on TV up and down the [San Joaquin] Valley, up and down the coast, and also with targeted advertising on the internet,” he told the Washington Examiner, estimating the average price tag for a Californian statewide race to be between $30 million and $50 million.
Despite California’s reputation as a liberal stronghold, Ballard explained more moderate candidates tend to win statewidea and Bloomberg, a self-funded contender with a pragmatic message, was a “savvy” operative “with deep pockets,” who’s done “extensive polling of California voters.”
“Michael Bloomberg has played quite a bit in California politics with his soda tax measures and his environmental measures, so he has experience on the ground in California,” he said. “He’s already won the endorsement of an influential mayor, Michael Tubbs of Stockton, and when he was in the state two weeks ago, he had former Gov. Jerry Brown share the stage with him, which is not something that a lot of other candidates can point to. He’s extraordinarily well-connected in California.”
But Democratic strategist Bill Carrick warned the number of Democratic candidates this cycle could make it harder for any one contender to meet the 15% threshold. Bloomberg’s Super Tuesday approach was “a big gamble,” recalling Rudy Giuliani’s failed strategy for winning the 2008 Republican nomination, when the former New York City mayor — Bloomberg’s predecessor in that office — skipped traditional early states such as Iowa, only to crater in larger contests later.
“Is there room for all these people to get into this? How many people are going to get 15%?” Carrick asked. “I don’t think the choice he had was all that clear which is the right way to go. Historically we’ve certainly seen candidates skip early states, who never got into a position to be competitive. Everybody says Rudy Giuliani all the time, but he’s not the only one.”
Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether Bloomberg’s ads are having any effect at all.
Marisa Fierro, 40, told the Washington Examiner on the sidelines of a Pete Buttigieg Latino town hall in Walnut, California, a city on Los Angeles County’s eastern outskirts, that she hadn’t “formed much of an opinion of him.”
“And I actually don’t hear much talk of him,” the San Bernardino County college fundraiser said. “I don’t know whether that’s just because we’re on a different coast, or he entered a little too late, or we’re just not as familiar with him because of where he’s from. At least in my conversations with my groups, he never really comes up.”
For Linda Han, 53, an Orange County pharmacist, the California race will likely come down to former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“If you believe that money corrupts, you’re never going to be in Bloomberg’s corner, so it depends on your values. On the other hand, if you believe what Pete says and you don’t think money influences anything, then you probably would go with Bloomberg,” Han said at a Sanders rally at Los Angeles’s Venice Beach, two days after the Dec. 19 Democratic debate.
Biden and Sanders are separated by 0.2 percentage points, according to RealClearPolitics data, with 21.2% and 21% of the vote apiece. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is within striking distance at 19.6% support, with Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, trailing at 9.6%. Bloomberg follows entrepreneur and nonprofit organization executive Andrew Yang, with the pair posting 4.6% and 3.3%, respectively.
California-based Democratic National Committee member Bob Mulholland, however, is skeptical about the topline figures.
“If you do polling in California now, you get certain numbers. but, to be frank, nobody but us insiders are spending an hour watching cable news,” he said. “Early-voting state voters are like shoppers on Black Friday; they go to multiple events. Just because they’re at your rally, it doesn’t mean anything about love. There’s no marriage certificate here yet. It is all Friday dating apps.”
Mulholland recommended keeping an eye on “who has the chartered plane post-South Carolina and watch what states they go to,” given the “First in the South” nominating contest will take place on Feb. 29, three days before Super Tuesday. If candidates don’t perform there, “California will act like they’ve never met you,” he told the Washington Examiner.
“They can’t go to all 14. Maybe Bloomberg could because Bloomberg has set up a system like the Pony Express, where they change horses every 10 miles. He can change planes and pilots. But the rest of these people are going to be exhausted, and there’s going to be a lot of internal stress about where to shift resources to,” Mulholland said.
