Money in politics has been a punching bag for candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, but two billionaires are making their mark on the White House race in different ways.
Michael Bloomberg, 77, and Tom Steyer, 62, both late entrants into the contest, are proving to be political forces in a primary cycle where presidential hopefuls have come under extreme pressure to shun corporate political action committee cash and stigma being attached to exclusive, high-dollar fundraisers. Bloomberg is entirely self-funding his White House bid, while Steyer is lining his campaign coffers with his own money.
Construction worker Eric Soderman, 49, complained about the pair’s influence to the Washington Examiner on the sidelines of a Bernie Sanders rally in Venice Beach, California.
“Billionaires buying stuff,” the Orange County resident said dismissively. “It’s hard to find a candidate these days that actually doesn’t have this nasty history behind him of just bad decisions, and Bloomberg is one of those guys,” he added, specifically regarding the former New York City mayor.
Despite Steyer partly funding efforts by her Democratic Party chapter in Santa Monica, California, to pass a housing bill, Patricia Hoffman, 71, was uncomfortable with “billionaires buying their way into the presidential race.”
“We would really like to see democracy belonging to the people, not to the dollars,” the retiree said after an Amy Klobuchar event in the Los Angeles County seaside city.
Yet the wealthy candidate duo is making inroads before delegate counting begins ahead of the Democratic National Convention in the summer.
Steyer this week qualified for the last debate before the opening Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3 thanks to a flurry of strong polls out of Nevada and South Carolina posting double-digit support that put him in the mix with top-tier contenders Joe Biden and Sanders. He’ll join Biden, Sanders, as well as Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and Elizabeth Warren, on stage in Des Moines on Jan. 14.
“Once again, it’s looking like there will be more billionaires than Black people on the debate stage. And as it currently stands, there will be no candidates of color on stage. Not a single one,” Democratic rival Cory Booker emailed supporters in response.
Steyer, a hedge fund manager, environmentalist, and Democratic megadonor who boosted the push for President Trump’s impeachment, announced his candidacy in July and has since flooded the airwaves in those two early voting states with more than $23 million worth of TV ads, bringing his total $99.5 million, including digital.
Despite twin controversies last November involving an aide stealing thousands of volunteer contacts from Kamala Harris in South Carolina and another staff member offering campaign contributions to Iowa politicians in exchange for endorsements, Steyer’s righting the ship, tapping professionals such as Jeff Berman, the delegate guru who helped engineer former President Barack Obama’s primary victory over Hillary Clinton in 2008. He’s also managed to turn his past investments in fossil fuel projects into a talking point by plugging how he’s used the profits to finance his climate change activism.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg, who threw his hat in the ring last November, is a dark horse, waiting until after the first four contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina to strike, focusing instead on the 14 so-called “Super Tuesday” states that go to the polls on March 3. The media mogul and philanthropist has spent $202 million on ads to date, including a Super Bowl commercial, and pays his state field organizers $6,000 a month, almost twice as much as Sanders and Warren.
Although his patchy record as a party-switcher, his flip-flop on “stop-and-frisk” policies, and his response to lawsuits alleging he fostered hostile workplaces for women gave some Democrats pause, he has won others over with the promise to leverage any campaign infrastructure he builds to prop up the eventual nominee against Trump in the general election.
“Bloomberg signaling today he will fund his organization through November with the singular goal of defeating Trump has won him a lot of praise from activists today,” Christopher Hahn, Aggressive Progressive podcast host and former Democratic strategist, told the Washington Examiner Friday. “Primaries are funny. People get mad at this or that, then they tend to unify for the general. This didn’t happen in 2016, and the results were a disaster for Democrats.”
For political analyst Dan Schnur, an independent and former Republican now at the University of Southern California, the main ramification of Bloomberg’s and Steyer’s deep pockets was they reinforced preconceived notions.
“If you already like Bloomberg or Steyer on the merits, then his money makes him his own man and independent. If you oppose one of them for substantive reasons, then he’s just an obnoxious rich guy trying to buy an election,” he said.
