Bloomberg’s big bucks fuel unique strategy for WH run

NEW YORK: Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is using his personal fortune to deploy a campaign starkly different from the rest of the 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls, including skipping key states long toiled by less well-off rivals.

The former New York mayor was late to the election party, announcing his candidacy for the party nomination on November 24, months after frontrunners Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

Bloomberg, who has a net worth of more than $54 billion according to Forbes (compared to President Donald Trump’s $3.1 billion), plans to play by a different set of rules to the other leading candidates, such as bypassing the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire which have been key to winning the nomination for decades.

The 77 year-old politician is spending heavily on online and TV ad campaigns while activating a wide network of mayors built up over the years through his commitment to the environment and through training programs for elected officials run by his Bloomberg Philanthropies foundation.

National polls suggest the strategy has merit. The founder of the media empire that shares his name is polling at an average of five percent, putting him fifth out of the 15 Democratic candidates vying to take on Republican Trump in November 2020.

Centrist Biden and left-winger Sanders have around 27 and 19 percent support respectively, while Senator Elizabeth Warren is third with 15 percent and Pete Buttigieg fourth with eight percent.

Bloomberg has ambitious plans for gun control and the climate, but he is also an economic conservative -- unlike Warren and Sanders, who want to heavily tax the rich to reduce income disparities. Analysts however are skeptical Bloomberg’s iconoclastic battle plan.