Bloomberg blitzes Florida as 1 million Democratic primary voters receive mail ballots
Nearly 100,000 presidential primary ballots are going out in the mail Friday to Democrats in the bluest county in Florida, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign is flooding South Florida in a push to chase them down.
Bloomberg, a billionaire who has tapped his own fortune to hire dozens of staffers around the state in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, is blitzing Florida during the first days of a one-week period in which more than 1 million mail ballots will be sent to Democratic primary voters ahead of the March 17 primary, including almost 100,000 in Broward County. His Florida campaign announced Friday that it is organizing more than 500 events across the state this weekend, including phone banks in the northern Broward suburbs and an office opening in Little Havana.
He’s also purchased ads blanketing media in Florida including TV commercials, social media and websites.
The effort comes at a key time in the presidential primary, falling immediately after Monday’s glitch-filled Iowa caucuses and before next week’s first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire. And as his opponents chase votes in the Northeast, Bloomberg is uniquely able to hunt mail ballots in the south.
“While other candidates scramble to move on from the Iowa Caucus debacle, Mike and Team Bloomberg have been laser focused on gathering real support from Floridians,” Scott Kosanovich, Bloomberg’s Florida state director, wrote in a memo released Friday.
Indeed, Florida’s relatively late primary date has given most candidates little incentive to spend precious campaign dollars in the state or make personal appearances. The top seven candidates are all scheduled to be in New Hampshire Friday for a debate that could prove pivotal in the early delegate chase as campaigns jockey for money and media attention.
But Bloomberg has nearly unlimited resources, and has adopted an unconventional strategy of ignoring early primaries in favor of delegate-rich states with March election dates, such as Florida, which offers 219 pledged delegates to split among the candidates.
“I think he can win and I think he’s going about it the right way,” said Ira Leesfield, a Coconut Grove attorney and prominent political fundraiser, who said he decided after the Iowa caucuses to commit to Bloomberg. “I think people are looking for a candidate who represents their views, and who can win.”
Kosanovich wrote Friday that the campaign has dispersed more than 100 trained field organizers across Florida, and plans to have 20 campaign offices open by mid-February. Bloomberg recently swung through Tampa, Aventura and Miami on a day trip in which he launched a national Jewish voter coalition.
Bloomberg, though, is hardly alone in Florida.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has declared victory in Iowa, just hired a Florida political director, and his enthusiastic supporters are organizing events and voter outreach efforts. Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who also declared victory in Iowa, has a plan in place to chase Florida mail ballots, too, according to his campaign.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the first to hire political staff members in the state, is planning to open up a Miami office in the city’s Upper East Side, according to one campaign supporter who received an alert for a Feb. 15 event. And Dwight Bullard, a former state lawmaker and current political director for New Florida Majority, a liberal grassroots organization that has endorsed Warren’s campaign, says the group will begin neighborhood canvassing toward the end of the month, and has been texting independent voters to persuade them to vote for Warren.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who called his fourth place in Iowa finish a “gut punch,” has held a steady and significant lead in Florida in polls taken over the course of a calendar year. Kosanovich pointed in his memo to polls showing a recent Bloomberg surge in the state, still well behind Biden.
This article has been updated to correct information regarding the number of events planned by the Bloomberg campaign this weekend in Florida. The campaign is planning more than 1,250 events across the country.
This story was originally published February 7, 2020 at 12:12 PM.
