Michael Bloomberg is nixing plans to set up a separate organization dedicated to defeating President Trump, instead funneling $18 million from his defunct 2020 White House bid into the Democratic Party.
Bloomberg’s announcement, heralded by his team as the “largest transfer from a presidential campaign in recent history,” will boost the Democratic National Committee as it prepares to go up against Trump’s well-funded reelection committee and congressional Republicans around the country in November.
“This will allow us to scale up our Battleground Build-Up Program and hire hundreds of more organizers in order to beat Donald Trump. A change in presidential leadership is more important now than ever,” DNC spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa tweeted Friday.
This will allow us to scale up our Battleground Build-Up Program and hire hundreds of more organizers in order to beat Donald Trump. A change in presidential leadership is more important now than ever. https://t.co/3rG5Uw929V
— Xochitl Hinojosa (@XochitlHinojosa) March 20, 2020
To put the cash injection into context, the DNC, which has struggled to raise money in the past, brought in only $12.8 million in the month of February.
Bloomberg had long signaled that he would divert resources from his White House bid into an independent expenditure operation that would support the Democratic nominee, focusing on six general election battleground states. Those states included Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Bloomberg’s offices will now be donated to the respective state parties, with his staff paid through the first week in April and having full benefits through the end of April. They were originally promised work through the fall fight.
“While we considered creating our own independent entity to support the nominee and hold the President accountable, this race is too important to have many competing groups with good intentions but that are not coordinated and united in strategy and execution,” Mike Bloomberg 2020 Campaign wrote to DNC Chairman Tom Perez in a memo.
They added, “The dynamics of the race have also fundamentally changed, and it is critically important that we all do everything we can to support our eventual nominee and scale the Democratic Party’s general election efforts.”
A spokeswoman for presumptive nominee Joe Biden said the two-term vice president welcomed the gift.
“We need to compete with the war chest that Donald Trump, the RNC, and their right-wing allies have amassed, and this will go a long way in ensuring that we can fund the grassroots efforts in key battleground states that will be necessary to win this November,” spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield tweeted.
The Democratic Party stands united and fully committed to defeating the most dangerous president in modern history, and we welcome the announcement of Mayor Bloomberg’s extraordinary investment to ensure that happens. 1/ https://t.co/mIGP7gjVAd
— Kate Bedingfield (@KBeds) March 20, 2020
Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York City and billionaire information services entrepreneur, spent more than $500 million seeking the Democratic presidential nomination before bowing out following Super Tuesday after he only carried American Samoa. He hasn’t ruled out still investing big against Trump on the airwaves and on the ground before November through another super PAC called Independence USA.
The revelation, however, is likely to rankle more liberal Democrats who wanted the party to avoid the influence of billionaires in the way it operates and what it stands for. While legal, the decision flouts the spirit of Federal Elections Commission rules and regulations that would have imposed limitations on what Bloomberg could have personally given to the DNC.
