A 2020 match-up between President Trump and fellow New Yorker Michael Bloomberg would make for “very, very competitive race,” former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said Wednesday.
Bloomberg is among the growing number of Democrats who are considering challenging Trump in the next presidential election. The billionaire former New York City mayor has pledged to spend $80 million to help elect congressional Democratic candidates in the fall midterm elections, and has reportedly told confidantes he’s weighing a White House bid after declining to run as an independent in 2016.
Though the 76-year-old was a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton in 2016, he has developed a positive reputation among progressives for his left-of-center positions on gun control, immigration, and climate change. Bloomberg left the Republican Party in 2007 and has reportedly told friends he would run as a Democrat in 2020 if he decides to run.
“He checks many, many boxes in the progressive movement: he’s exceptionally wealthy, has 100 percent name I.D. [and] he’s willing to self-fund a race because he put $100 million dollars into his own race for mayor of New York City,” Lewandowski told reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
Lewandowski was responding to a question about Trump’s potential challengers, and who would make the most formidable opponent on the Democratic side.
Because Bloomberg is similar to the president in many ways, and doesn’t carry the baggage of “being part of the culture in D.C.,” the White House should be scared if he enters the race next year, Lewandowski said.
“He has a history of running the nation’s largest city, and he doesn’t have the same problems that senators have, which is the schedule of being in the U.S. Senate,” Lewandowski said. He said Bloomberg, who has an estimated net worth of $52 billion, “could literally write a check for $250 million dollars tomorrow – and as a rounding error in his bank account.”
Besides being competitive, Lewandowski said a Trump vs. Bloomberg race would give voters more opportunities to hear from both candidates as both men would be less likely to spend significant time raising money for their campaigns.
“It would be a very, very competitive race and it would be a race that wouldn’t require an enormous amount of time fundraising,” he predicted. “They would just be on the campaign trail the entire time and you would get much more.”
Bloomberg, however, wouldn’t be the president’s top choice for an opponent. Trump has previously said it would be a “dream” for him to run against former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden in 2020.
