The “Money’s-No-Object” Candidate

By: Christine Rex

It’s campaign season in American and in DC residents celebrate its coming as if it were the Superbowl. Beltway locals pack DC bars and cheer on candidates during debates as if they were famed athletes.

But for those outside the beltway, or more commonly referred to as the Real World, campaign season brings one thing, campaign ads. And there was one candidate that took media blitzing to the extreme. 

Enter former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. This late joiner to the Democratic Primary competition and Planet Earth’s 12th richest person (Schaul, Uhrmacher, & Narayanswamy, 2020), spent an unprecedented $500,000,000 of his own personal funds to launch a full fledged presidential media blitzkrieg (Peters, 2020). Or to put it another way, Bloomberg spent less than 1% of his total net worth competing for a shot at the White House (Peters, 2020).

So endemic were Bloomberg’s ads that by the end of his short lived three-month-long campaign over 2/3rds of the country’s registered voters had played audience member to his media takeover (Schaul, et al, 2020). Upon his March 4th withdrawal from the primary the Bloomberg campaign was running 30,000 online ad spots per minute (Powers, 2020), spent more on facebook ads than all other candidates combined, and outspent all other field candidates by more than 10 times (Schaul, et al, 2020). 

Bloomberg is no stranger to politics, with a track record of supporting political seats from the local school board to Congress. To date, Bloomberg has personally spent $223.1 million in political support and is the single most important donor to Democrats (Burns & Kulish, 2020). And although he has never been accused of coercing candidates, the optics of his financial infusions lead many to question just what extent his pocket book is influencing candidates. 

More specifically to the 2020 Presidential Primary, his intentional skipping of early primary states, including Iowa and New Hampshire, had competitors crying foul and had many alleging that he was paying his way into the presidency. Former Democratic Nominee hopeful Kamala Harris ended her bid to the White House citing that she wasn’t a billionaire and as such could no longer afford to compete (Greve, 2019). 

The rise of self-funded candidates, like Ross Perot, Donald Trump, and Michael Bloomberg, have created a chasm for everyday candidates to be able to compete in the democratic process. 

Bloomberg’s campaign spend was 90% more than what it cost President Trump to win the White House in 2016 (Powers, 2020). But Bloomberg viewed his campaign as a point of pride and a revolt against financial influence by outside political donors. 

In the end Bloomberg exited the scene having reached 3rd in the national polls and granting his endorsement to Former Vice President Joe Biden (Powers, 2020). The air waves were returned to their regularly scheduled programming, President Trump was left crafting new nicknames for his current political opponents, and the Beltway was left wondering at what point is this level of campaign blitzkrieg a form of media bribery? 

References

Burns, A. & Kulish, N., (2020, February 15). Bloomberg’s Billions: How the Candidates Built an Empire of Influence. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/15/us/politics/michael-bloomberg-spending.html

Greve, J. (2019, December 16). Man with the money: Democrats cry foul as Bloomberg splashes cash. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/16/man-with-the-money-democrats-cry-foul-as-bloomberg-splashes-the-cash

Peters, J. (2020, February 17). I watched 185 Mike Bloomberg Ads. Slate. Retrieved from 

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/michael-bloombergs-ads-ranked.html

Powers, J. (2020, February 28). Debate Mike vs Tv-ad Mike: How Bloomberg revived the relevance of the political TV commercial.  Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2020-02-28/michael-bloomberg-mike-revived-political-tv-ads-debate

Schaul, K., Uhrmacher, K., Narayanswamy, A. (2020, February 19). Bloomberg’s immense spending gets him 30,000 online ads a minute, and a whole lot more. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/politics/bloomberg-ad-spending-scale/