Last week, Vanessa Williamson of the Brookings Institute wrote about the political force of Bloomberg's tactical charity. Bloomberg gives far more than Trump, but with much the same self-serving motives. "In his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination," wrote Williamson, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has already spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, more than that of the major Democratic candidates combined. But, ironically, focusing on his immense campaign budget underrates the impact of Bloomberg’s money on his chances. Just as important is the political force of his charitable giving."
[P]olitics in America is increasingly organized around institutions reliant on big-donor philanthropy. Candidates, local and state parties, advocacy organizations, think tanks, and many foundations are in a constant scramble for money. Few leaders of these organizations will want to offend a man whose personal wealth makes their entire operating budgets look like a negligible rounding error.And in case Bloomberg’s potential support had escaped the attention of any would-be grantees, he ramped up his giving in advance of his presidential bid. Bloomberg outspent every other billionaire philanthropist last year, giving away $3.3 billion dollars, nearly five times more than he did in 2017. This spending has had little impact on his overall wealth; the 77-year-old Bloomberg remains the eighth-richest man in the world, with more than $50 billion dollars.His tactical philanthropy gives Bloomberg the unique capacity to influence the decision-making of the institutions that are traditional power brokers and opinion makers in Democratic politics. As Bloomberg knows well from his stint as mayor, big-money “charity” is an imposition of the giver’s political will. While he is best known for his work on the crucial issue of gun control, Bloomberg has also deployed his wealth to bully and sideline potential opponents. “When church groups or community organizations threatened to get noisy in opposition to him or his programs, he wrote checks that tended to quiet them down,” writes Edward-Isaac Dovere in his analysis of Bloomberg’s mayoralty. Bloomberg can run pork-barrel politics out of his own pocket. And, of course, the political effects of Bloomberg’s philanthropy are not limited to New York.Charity tends to get a free pass when it comes to its political effects. Liberal concern about “money in politics” is usually limited to direct electoral engagement. Charitable endeavors are seen as sacrosanct; witness the opposition President Barack Obama faced upon attempting to limit the charitable deduction. (The tax implications of Bloomberg’s run are interesting in themselves-- assuming the billionaire gets a tax write-off for his charity, and that those contributions meaningfully contribute to his presidential chances, he is the only major candidate whose campaign is publicly subsidized.)Big-dollar philanthropy deserves vastly more criticism than it receives; when wealth is highly concentrated, charity comes at enormous cost to the public good. The Democratic presidential primary has already seen multiple experienced public servants drop from contention for lack of funds, including, not coincidentally, every single non-white person who was a serious contender for the nomination. If Bloomberg can buy his way out of the public scrutiny that a campaign is supposed to afford-- if he can purchase, rather than persuade, the party faithful-- it represents yet another fissure in our decaying political process.In essence, Bloomberg is engaging in a very old form of politics that has long been recognized as at odds with the function of representative institutions. As political theorist Emma Saunders-Hastings explains, philanthropy in ancient Rome was “not only comparable to campaign finance”-- it was campaign finance. To assure their political base, those wishing to accrue power gave generously to the poor. Machiavelli, whose analyses made his name synonymous with the pursuit of power, recognized that philanthropy was a form of political domination. “Many times works that appear merciful,” he wrote, “are very dangerous for a republic.”Machiavelli would easily have recognized the implications of Bloomberg’s philanthropy for his position in the Democratic primary. No matter his intentions, the Bloomberg campaign’s reliance on his personal wealth threatens America’s democratic institutions at a time when those institutions are already profoundly weakened. His charitable contributions exacerbate the risks posed by his self-funded campaign. Money is power, even when it is donated.
Vanity Fair star reporter, Gabe Sherman, took an entirely different tact last week in his Bloomberg coverage-- the cynical phoniness of his concerted effort to pretend that Obama endorsed him as his political heir. Millions of dollars that Bloomberg has spent on propagating two TV ads and a radio spot makes it look like he and Obama are close allies. That couldn't be further from the truth.
Obamaworld, with its long memory, was not happy. “I was triggered by the ad,” a former Obama official said. “The ubiquity of the ads is what bothers me,” Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s former communications director told me. “Bloomberg didn’t endorse Obama in 2008, and in 2012 he offered a tepid endorsement that included parts that read like an RNC attack ad.”Several recent reports have acknowledged Bloomberg’s policy differences with Obama, but sources close to both men tell me the antagonism runs much deeper. In private, Obama thinks Bloomberg acted high-handed and arrogant, while Bloomberg has told friends that Obama is a lightweight, sources said. “Mike would have dinner parties and piss all over Obama when he was president. I know because I attended them,” a prominent Democratic donor told me.The chasm between Bloomberg and Obama first opened when Obama ran in 2007. Bloomberg seriously toyed with the idea of running for president, a longtime dream of his chief political adviser Kevin Sheekey. When Bloomberg didn’t get into the race, he backed fellow Republican John McCain. At a dinner party during the 2008 election, a source remembers Bloomberg’s longtime girlfriend, Diana Taylor, getting into an argument with Sheekey’s wife, who was supporting Obama. “How can you be so stupid to be for someone like Obama?” Taylor asked, the person told me. “Diana was repeating what Mike would say about Obama, except it was louder,” the source recalled. (The Bloomberg campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)A confidant of both Bloomberg and Obama told me the tension between them was in part fueled by Bloomberg’s belief that he should be president. “Bloomberg would belittle Obama in private. It was like, That should have been me in the White House. There was jealousy there,” the source said.Although Bloomberg is running to defeat Donald Trump, some people close to the campaign say Bloomberg’s embrace of Obama is, well, Trumpian. “It’s becoming an incredible turnoff. He’s flooding the airwaves with nonstop ads that are just not accurate,” a prominent Democrat who speaks frequently to the campaign told me. Another person with close ties to the campaign said Bloomberg’s strategy is, in effect, to say whatever he needs to say to win key states on Super Tuesday. According to the source, Bloomberg didn’t want to debate the other candidates. The campaign had hoped to saturate television with ads and avoid the press until Super Tuesday, but the DNC changed the requirements to put him onstage. “There are no rules on the campaign,” the source said.
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