Michael Bloomberg: A Prediction Part 2

In the first part of this post we reviewed the career of Michael Bloomberg as mayor of
New York City and his succession to the office previously held by the popular
Mayor Rudy Guiliani. Bloomberg is a wealthy, charitable and competent administrator
as well as a successful businessman.

Bloomberg is not the first wealthy man to run for public office. To make sure that he was successful, he is rumoured to have spent $100 million of his own money on his
initial campaign for mayor. In 2005, Bloomberg was re-elected by a huge margin – no doubt aided by his $100 million self-financed war chest.

When faced with the city’s term limits, Bloomberg led a campaign to change those limits and once again ran for another term. Perhaps the use of financial clout to change the basic rules of election had an effect on Bloomberg’s popularity and he was only able to win his third term by a smaller margin of 4%.

As we can see, the normal rules which usually govern candidates for election do not
always hold in the case of Michael Bloomberg. Using his enormous economic clout
he has shown the ability to reposition the goal post when it is convenient and
in his interest to do so.

Bloomberg was always a Democrat. Realizing that to run for mayor in 2001 he required the support of Rudy Guiliani, Bloomberg made what for many would be an impossible decision when he decided to register as a Republican in order to make it easier to obtain Guiliani’s endorsement. The case could be made that Guiliani could have endorsed practically anyone and they likely would have been successful in 2001. This is a measure of Guiliani’s popularity and not necessarily the clout of his political machine. Bloomberg recognized this and maintained his political affiliation as a Republican when he ran for a second term in 2005.

By now Bloomberg and his $100 million per term campaign fund were starting to feel confident enough to distance himself from being a Republican. Perhaps influenced by the unpopularity of George Bush, Bloomberg made a decision to run as an independent candidate in 2009. He also allowed rumours to coalesce that he was a potential independent party candidate for the presidency in that same period. This tends to be good politics whether you are bluffing or not as both political parties court favour to keep you out of the presidential race.