Mike Bloomberg’s 2020 presidential campaign

Vox writers are making the best case for the leading Democratic candidates. This article is the fifth in the series. Read them all here. Vox does not endorse individual candidates.

On March 4, Mike Bloomberg dropped out of the presidential race after winning few delegates on Super Tuesday.

Turns out half a billion dollars can’t get you very far in the Democratic primary, at least if you’re Mike Bloomberg in 2020.

The billionaire businessman, philanthropist, and former New York City mayor pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into television, radio, and digital ads to propel his campaign. He hired more than 2,000 staffers across 43 states after launching his presidential bid in November 2020. His bet: All that money would translate into big wins on Super Tuesday and beyond. But it appears not to be the case — on Tuesday, Bloomberg sort of crashed and burned, or at the very least picked up fewer votes and delegates than he might have hoped. He dropped out of the race the next day.

Mike Bloomberg has ended his 2020 presidential bid and is endorsing Joe Biden.

The billionaire businessman, philanthropist, and former New York City mayor announced that he is suspending his White House run on Wednesday morning, the day after widely underperforming on Super Tuesday. It marks the end of what was probably the most unconventional campaign of the 2020 election and certainly the fastest-spending one. Bloomberg has said he’ll keep the infrastructure he put in place for his campaign up and running until November, which could be an important boon for the Democratic Party, perhaps especially Biden.

Mike Bloomberg won American Samoa’s Democratic caucuses on Super Tuesday.

Bloomberg, who appeared on the primary ballot for the first time on Tuesday, defeated rivals Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Tulsi Gabbard. American Samoa’s caucuses were part of a slew of elections on Super Tuesday, with a massive 1,344 delegates on the line — around one-third of the total 3,979 pledged delegates.

There are probably two things many people tuning in to the Democratic presidential primary know about Mike Bloomberg’s mayoral record in New York City: He backed stop-and-frisk policing, and he tried to ban giant sodas. But Bloomberg’s record in New York is a lot more extensive — and complicated — than that.

Recently, critics have resurfaced videos and audio of him speaking about people of color in crass ways, pledging to defend banks, and making other remarks that aren’t appealing to a lot of Democrats. Bernie Sanders has accused Bloomberg of supporting “racist policies,” and he isn’t the only one. People are justifiably upset about all of this, and it’s worth questioning whether Bloomberg’s apology now that he’s running for the White House is more than a matter of political expediency than it is actual regret.

“I know more about foreign policy than any of the candidates. I’ve negotiated deals around the world, I’ve dealt with politicians in every one of these countries, we do business with their companies and with their governments.”

You’d be forgiven for thinking Donald Trump said this. But you’d be wrong.

On Monday, presidential hopeful and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s campaign posted — and then deleted — several controversial tweets about rival Sen. Bernie Sanders that prompted confusion and tested the rules of what political campaigns can share on social media.

The tweets, which Bloomberg’s campaign called satire, featured fictitious quotes attributed to Sanders, in which Sanders appeared to praise dictators like Kim Jong Un, Bashar al-Assad, and Vladimir Putin, with the hashtag “#BernieonDespots.”

Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg will soon be on the ballot in the Democratic presidential primary for the first time in 15 states and territories. Ahead of voting on Super Tuesday, March 3, he is flooding the airwaves with $124 million worth of ads.

Bloomberg’s climate change record is a key part of his pitch:

Mike Bloomberg’s slogan is that he can get it done. But actually, maybe it’s Elizabeth Warren who can. At least when it comes to forcing the former New York City mayor’s hand on releasing women who have complained about his past comments from nondisclosure agreements.

On Friday, Bloomberg announced that his company, Bloomberg LP, had identified three NDAs signed by women related directly to remarks he allegedly made and that it would release them if they wanted. He also said that Bloomberg will no longer offer confidentiality agreements to resolve sexual harassment or misconduct complaints.

Following his lackluster performance in Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate, former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg tweeted out a doctored video that made it look like he had a hugely successful moment on the debate stage, even though he didn’t.

And while politicians putting out campaign ads that take their opponents’ words out of context or are selectively edited to misconstrue their opponents’ positions is a practice basically as old as time itself, some experts are calling the Bloomberg video dangerous and unethical in a digital age rife with disinformation.

When Sekiko Sakai Garrison told her boss she was pregnant, she says in a lawsuit, he told her to “kill it.”

When she asked him to repeat himself, he said it again: “kill it.” Then, according to her suit, he mumbled, “Great! Number 16!” — a reference to the number of women at his company who were pregnant or on maternity leave.

In a stunning moment of the Democratic debate on Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren confronted former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg directly and repeatedly about nondisclosure agreements his past employees agreed to sign regarding allegations of a hostile work environment.

Warren and others have been pushing for Bloomberg to release employees of these NDAs — which prevent them from speaking out publicly about alleged experiences with sexism and harassment — for months. And she ramped up the pressure on Wednesday, following up on a question initially raised by moderator Hallie Jackson.

Since entering the presidential race in November, Mike Bloomberg has spent more than $400 million of his own money on ads. If you ignore Tom Steyer, the other self-funding billionaire chasing the Democratic nomination, Bloomberg has spent more than three times as much as all the other Democratic candidates combined.

Nor is it just the ad spending that has greased Bloomberg’s rise. He’s spent a decade as a generous and effective donor to progressive causes, friendly politicians, cash-strapped cities, and worthy nonprofits. Journalist Blake Zeff has a sharp Twitter thread showing how Bloomberg has used his largesse to quiet criticism and win allies.

Bernie Sanders’s internet army is a driving force of his campaign. Mike Bloomberg appears to be trying to replicate it. But while the social media momentum behind Sanders is largely organic, much of Bloomberg’s is paid.

The former New York City mayor’s campaign is hiring hundreds of people in California to spread the pro-Bloomberg word on social media and via text message, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. His campaign is trying to bring on upward of 500 “deputy digital organizers” to promote Bloomberg to everyone in their phones’ contact lists and on their private social media accounts. And the pay isn’t bad: $2,500 a month for 20-30 hours per week of work.

Mike Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and late entry to the Democratic presidential race, emphasizes the need for humane immigration enforcement and more foreign workers in his immigration plan released on Monday, which largely mirrors those of other moderate candidates.

The Democratic field, including Bloomberg, is in agreement on a few immigration principles: The next president should undo President Trump’s policies, set enforcement priorities rather than indiscriminately prosecute every unauthorized border crossing, and make the immigration system work better for foreigners seeking to come to the US legally.

As former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg rises in the polls — he’s now fourth in national polling averages — he is also facing renewed criticism over his record with minority communities, even fielding tweets about it from President Donald Trump on Tuesday.

Bloomberg has faced questions over his mayoral policies that affected New York’s nonwhite population before, but after progressive podcaster Benjamin Dixon recirculated Bloomberg’s 2015 speech at the Aspen Institute defending his city’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy on Tuesday, those questions are once again in the national conversation.

This Sunday, there will be two competitions happening as the 2020 Super Bowl unfolds. The San Francisco 49ers will, of course, face the Kansas City Chiefs for the Super Bowl 54 title.

But there will also be an undercard fight of sorts: President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg have both spent millions on competing ads that will air during the Big Game.

Mike Bloomberg seemingly suggested behind closed doors at an event with Silicon Valley elite on Thursday that former Vice President Joe Biden could be a “lame duck” president if elected, implying that the former New York mayor is the better moderate 77-year-old to support.

Toward the end of his 10-minute pitch to about 200 tech executives, investors, and socialites, Bloomberg, looking at notes, offered the contrast without naming Biden explicitly, according to video posted to social media and seen by Recode.

Michael Bloomberg momentum isn’t exactly happening — but it’s not not happening, either.

The billionaire philanthropist and former New York City mayor has been gradually ticking upward in state and national polls since launching his presidential bid in November. A RealClearPolitics average of polls shows him in fifth place with about 6.6 percent support nationally, just behind former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, at 7.2 percent.

Mike Bloomberg will ask tech billionaires to support his presidential campaign in a private reception with some of Silicon Valley’s biggest power brokers on Thursday evening, Recode has learned.

The briefing behind closed doors shows how Bloomberg is not shy about seeking the backing of Big Tech — a group whose favor with the public has fallen so low that candidates like Sen. Elizabeth Warren have said they’ll reject taking their money entirely. The event is also a reminder of the support that Bloomberg, the world’s eighth-richest person, is drawing from the mega-wealthy who are concerned about the anti-billionaire rhetoric from Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Michael Bloomberg is very rich. And not just billionaire rich — he’s one of the richest people in the world, clocking in at more than $50 billion. How he got there: a computer system most people have never heard of, let alone seen.

Bloomberg is the founder of Bloomberg LP, a private, multibillion-dollar firm he launched in 1981. Today, the company does a lot of things — it deals in data, in technology, and in media — but it came to prominence because of the Bloomberg Terminal, a computer software system for the financial industry that basically puts all the relevant information, capabilities, and people in the same place.