Bloomberg zeroes in on Florida as Democratic rivals focus elsewhere
Mike Bloomberg is giving President Donald Trump unwanted company in Florida.
With most Democratic presidential hopefuls focused on the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses, Trump has run almost unchecked in the key battleground state, making repeated campaign appearances and hosting multiple rallies. But on Sunday, Bloomberg, the 77-year-old billionaire former mayor of New York, made his own swing through Florida, effectively kicking off his ground operation.
“The road to the White House goes through Florida, is the saying,” Bloomberg told the Miami Herald in an interview before an organizing event at Hillary Clinton’s old Wynwood headquarters. “That’s probably true.”
Unlike his Democratic competitors, whose campaigns may live or die on the results of the first four primaries and caucuses in February, Bloomberg is using his fortune to fund a campaign focused on delegate-rich states that hold primaries in March and April. Florida’s primary is March 17, although mail voting begins in days.
Bloomberg reportedly has already spent $250 million on his campaign, including millions on TV commercials in Florida. He has hired dozens of staffers in the state, and intends to hire dozens more while opening 20 Florida offices in the coming days. But he also downplayed reports that he might spend up to $2 billion on his campaign.
“It’s not about money,” he said. “We’re not going to spend anything like what people talk about. There’s a limited number of commercials you can run and a limited amount of staff you can have around the country.”
Bloomberg began the day with a light-hearted event in Tampa, where he sarcastically complained that he hadn’t had stone crab claws yet this season and cracked a joke about being a rare New Yorker in Florida during the winter. In Aventura, he launched United for Mike, a Jewish voter coalition that he framed as a retort to Trump’s Middle East policy and rhetoric and an affirmation of his own unconditional support for Israel.
“As president, I will always have Israel’s back,” Bloomberg told a crowd of several hundred gathered at the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center and Tauber Academy Social Hall. “And I will never walk away from our commitment to guarantee Israel’s security.”
Trump and Florida Republicans in general have been working aggressively to cast Democrats as anti-Israel, a campaign tactic that might prove successful in a state known for razor-tight races even if it drives only a small percentage of left-leaning Jewish voters away from Democrats.
Trump, in a South Florida speech last month to the Israeli-American Council, quipped that many in the audience probably didn’t vote for him in 2016 but wouldn’t have a choice but to support his reelection campaign if they wanted to protect their finances from Democrats’ plans to hike taxes on the wealthy.
“You have to vote for me. You have no choice,” Trump said in remarks that at the time drew laughter from the audience but were later assailed by critics as anti-Semitic. “You’re going to be my biggest supporters because you’ll be out of business in about 15 minutes” if the Democrats take back the presidency.
Bloomberg, who argues that he is the best and perhaps only Democratic candidate able to pull Republican and independent voters to the Democratic side, called Trump’s Israel rhetoric a “disgrace.” He also warned that Trump’s Middle East policies and military escalation with Iran are dangerous — even though he criticized elements of the nuclear pact negotiated by former President Barack Obama.
“My commitment to Israel is also the reason I opposed President Trump’s decision to unilaterally walk away from the deal and our partners in Europe. Because doing so was tantamount to giving Iran permission to relaunch its nuclear program,” Bloomberg said from a podium encircled by the audience. “And after years of compliance, Iran is once again marching toward the development of a nuclear weapon.”
Bloomberg told reporters Sunday that he’s running his campaign to beat Trump while insisting that he’s not overly focused on the president. He is planning to hop from Florida to New York, Maine, Vermont, Texas and California over the next week. He said he doesn’t plan to try to match Trump, appearance for appearance, in Florida, though he said he plans to come back often.
Still, Bloomberg talked plenty about Trump Sunday, telling a crowd in Wynwood that “unlike everyone else in this race, I have a record of beating Trump time and time again,” and calling himself the “un-Trump.”
“He makes promises, I keep them,” Bloomberg said.
And, apparently, Bloomberg was also on Trump’s mind.
The Trump campaign, as Bloomberg prepared to go on stage in Aventura, took a jab at the former mayor’s policies in New York, calling him “a hero to limousine liberals” and mocking “his brave struggle against large sodas,” a knock on his efforts to curb the sale of large sugary beverages. At Bloomberg’s Florida events, his supporters talked instead about Bloomberg’s advocacy for gun safety and climate change.
“What Mike is doing is launching a national campaign and he’s going to states where Democrats aren’t there yet, and he’s making sure Trump isn’t the only voice heard in Florida,” Ari Ackerman, part of the Florida Marlins ownership group, said in an interview.
Bloomberg told the Miami Herald that he also expects to perform well with Hispanic voters, another bloc that Trump has aggressively targeted by casting Democrats as socialists and touting his administration’s escalating pressure and sanctions on leftist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela.
“We’ll get a big turnout among Latino voters,” Bloomberg said, adding that he’s been taking Spanish lessons for 12 years. “Remember there are a lot of Latinos in New York.”
Bloomberg wouldn’t answer questions about whether he agreed with the Obama administration’s diplomatic positions regarding Venezuela or Obama’s Cuban rapprochement, which Trump has reversed. “I’ll wait until we put out a policy paper on that. I don’t want to get ahead of myself,” he said.
But on Trump and the Middle East, Bloomberg said Trump has pushed Iran toward developing nuclear capability. He also criticized Trump’s behavior in general, accusing him of using language that “echoes” of white nationalism and hate groups.
Hundreds of supporters, some wearing white T-shirts that said “Mishpucha for Mike” — meaning family for Mike in Yiddish —went to Aventura to hear Bloomberg speak. Bloomberg told them that, as president, he would “work to make the strongest deal possible to constrain the Iranian regime’s aggression and territorial ambitions, and put an end to their nuclear program.”
Bloomberg said “anti-Semitism is hardly the exclusive domain of one political party,” but blasted the president for stoking hatred “writ large,” and referenced Trump’s “fine people on both sides” comments in 2017 after a deadly clash between white supremacists and protesters in Virginia that ended when a neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd of people.
He said Trump — who controversially moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and calls himself the most pro-Israel president in history — has been trying to push left-leaning Jewish voters away from Democrats by using Israel as a wedge. But he said that has only weakened bipartisan support for Israel, and swore that if he is president, Jews “will never have to choose between supporting Israel and supporting our values here at home.”
Bloomberg used his speech in Aventura to reinforce his own ties to Florida and to the Jewish community in Miami, joking about the pickles at the iconic and now-closed Wolfie’s diner. He also contrasted himself with Bernie Sanders, the only other Jewish candidate in the race, by saying that he is the only one of the two “who doesn’t want to turn America into a kibbutz.”
But Bloomberg said the 2020 election is about more than economics or simple policy differences. And, he said, it’s about something larger than him and Trump: “This election is about so much more. It’s a referendum on the meaning of America.”
Miami Herald staff writer Bianca Padro Ocasio and Tampa Bay Times political editor Steve Contorno contributed to this report.
This story was originally published January 26, 2020 at 4:43 PM.
