Mike Bloomberg’s free-spending campaign rollout has rocketed him into contention for the Democratic nomination — but he now faces a challenge immune to his fortune.
The multi-billionaire qualified early Tuesday for the nationally televised debate in Las Vegas Wednesday night, clocking in at 19 percent in a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll — good for second place behind only Sen. Bernie Sanders. But making the debate stage threatens to lay bare one vulnerability Bloomberg’s wealth cannot guard against: himself.
The former New York City mayor’s irritability with questions he deems unwarranted and controversies he feels he has already put to bed could undermine his debut on the debate stage, where Americans will be introduced to the man behind the ubiquitous campaign ads.
His rivals, who have been piling on in recent days, will try to rattle him by attacking his record, campaign aides have told POLITICO. His own team worries that an unsteady showing alongside practiced candidates could stall his momentum and swallow his gains.
“We are expecting that he is going to have a lot of attention on him — he’s going to be attacked,” a Bloomberg official told POLITICO, noting that it would be his first debate since 2009. The official, who declined to speak on the record, pointed to the other candidates who’ve had months of practice in eight debates and numerous forums and “have gotten better as it’s gone on.”
So Bloomberg has spent weeks getting ready.
“You know me: I like a fight, and so I think it’d be fun to go and compete,” he said during an interview in Detroit earlier this month. Likening it to his sometimes contentious press conferences during his 12 years as mayor, he added, “I always thought that was fun to joust.”
Top Bloomberg lieutenants and policy experts have been preparing him for what would be the most unscripted event yet of his three-month-old campaign. As the prep sessions have ramped up, increasing in frequency, his team is working to get him to project comfort and composure in the line of fire, while portraying him as the toughest Democrat to take on Donald Trump.
Howard Wolfson, the veteran Democratic strategist who joined Bloomberg’s orbit in 2009 after working on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential race, is playing the role of Sanders; Julie Wood, Bloomberg’s national press secretary, is depicting Elizabeth Warren; and senior advisers Marc La Vorgna and Marcia Hale are stand-ins for Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, respectively.
Wolfson joked that his inspiration for Sanders came from watching “Statler and Waldorf,” the cantankerous elderly Muppets who lob critiques from their balcony seats. Asked about rivals trying to get under Bloomberg’s own skin, he quipped, “Haters gonna hate. Bring it on.”
Bloomberg is trying to hone a crisp and energetic appeal to voters that will contrast with Biden— another white, male septuagenarian on stage, according to advisers.
Other potential pitfalls for Bloomberg are his tendency to use dated language — words like “bawdy,” for instance — to dismiss concerns about his financial news service’s work culture for female employees.
Bloomberg has a history of losing his cool in public. He once grew visibly annoyed at a reporter in a wheelchair who interrupted his press conference when he dropped a recording device.
More recently, he urged a reporter to “get on with it” when he was pressed about his controversial stop-and-frisk policing tactic.
Snapping at other candidates or a moderator could undermine his efforts to convey empathy and contrition.
“He’s been super underwhelming on the stump so far. [I] think people seeing him up close; he could suffer from a little ‘Biden syndrome.’ Namely, he’s not as impressive when he’s not produced and he’s also pushing 80, which nobody seems to be talking about,” said New York-based political consultant Neal Kwatra, who is unaffiliated in the Democratic presidential primary. Bloomberg just turned 78.
Cracks formed in Biden’s perceived frontrunner status when he was caught off guard on the debate stage.
And while Bloomberg does not share Biden’s specific weaknesses, he brings his own, Kwatra noted: “He’s impatient, he gets ornery and he’ll get annoyed.”
“Most of the country is seeing a capable businessman with short, sweet, pithy ads bombarded all over TV and the internet and there’s a certain brand that’s already emerged,” Kwatra said. “At this stage of the game anything that contradicts that or undercuts that, it’s dangerous.”