The Ego and the Altruism of Mike Bloomberg
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Mike Bloomberg preparing backstage at the Charleston town-hall meeting on Neverth eless, February 26. The ego and the altruism of He Mike Bloomberg. BY VANESSA GRIGORIADIS PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID WILLIAMS Persists march 2–15, 2020 | new york 21 The owner begins evangelizing about plant-based nutrition and campaigns in our history. Bloomberg’s case, beyond climate how to command the camera, and who could stop rubbernecking opening a location in New York City. Then Bloomberg just starts to change, gun control, and urban renewal, rested on an electability whether one regarded him as a demigod or car crash? talk. “I was up in Maine and Vermont recently—look at the foliage argument—that defeating Trump was an absolute necessity and So why did Bloomberg run? Love or hate him, he is an exceed- and that kind of thing,” he says. “They have a diner we go to. The that a technocratic moderate was a safer bet than a democratic ingly rational creature, and, over the summer, his team identified food was really good. I said, ‘We should have those diners in New socialist. But in the space of two weeks, his campaign had seemed a teeny-tiny crack in the door that opens to more power than any- York.’ We’ve had a lot of diners close. It’s partially tastes have to damage moderate Biden’s prospects and dramatically elevate the where in the world—about a 5 percent chance of gaining the changed, but we’ve had four restaurants in my neighborhood close temperature of conflict between the party’s progressive and Wall presidency, I’d heard—and thought they’d try to wiggle through. in the past six months. Each one was in a townhouse. They’re rip- Street wings, all without managing much headway on his own Bloomberg had been under the impression that Biden had the ping them down and putting up these thin slivers of buildings. candidacy. By the end of February, the ride looked to be about moderate lane covered when he declared that he was skipping a There’s one two doors away from me. I had the developer and his over—or at least poised to come to a halt on Super Tuesday, after run in March 2019. But Bloomberg spent the summer in the wife over for dinner. He said they’re getting $3,000 a square foot two weeks of pile-ons from Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, dumps (golfing, grandkids, no longer jogging but doing a lot of for 4,000 square feet—one floor, 12 million bucks! He took the top an increasingly ugly and almost unending archive of oppo research speed walking), increasingly anxious about another four years floor for himself, and he thinks he’s going to move in.” (previous comments about how cops could Xerox pictures of under the thumb of a man who had been the laughingstock among “Nobody could pay that rent,” somebody pipes up. minorities to find criminals or suggesting Mitt Romney would be his elite friends for decades upon decades. Try to put yourself in the HE MORNING AFTER PRESIDENT TRUMP “Uh,” says Bloomberg, pausing, only a little self-consciously. a better president than Barack Obama) and an absolutely dead- shoes of a $60 billion ego: If one had Bloomberg’s fortune, and delivered his self-congratulatory State of the Union speech while “Y’know …” Then he motors on. “And the Upper East Side has eyed first appearance before a national audience, in which Bloomberg’s resolve, and did not at least try to destroy the Cheeto still in the midst of impeachment, several reporters are waiting in become less fashionable, supposedly.” Bloomberg didn’t seem to have anticipated needing to answer any with his own bare hands, what would that mean to history? Trump a Providence, Rhode Island, vegan café for Michael Bloomberg. This kind of monologue—weird, unguarded, almost like it was of the most obvious criticisms and whiffed his jokes. But in between, worked against the cause of progress, Trump was bad for the Most of them came from Philadelphia last night, where they scripted to illustrate out-of-touchness—is exactly what every politi- for a brief and glorious moment, it had looked like the New York planet, Trump was a threat to rationalism, Trump revealed his Tcovered his nighttime rally that had a laser-light show, buffet, open cal strategist in America pointed to when Bloomberg considered power and media elite, who are Bloomberg’s natural base, might indecency in Charlottesville, and who knew what terrifying animal bar, and rap performance. Like the rest of the media at the time, running for president in 2008, and then again in 2012, and then actually have their way, taking the most important presidential spirits he’d stir up next? “Mike once said to me, ‘The only way the they have been caught up in a kind of fever dream in which, again in 2016. That guy could never win in America, they said—not election of any of our lifetimes into their own hands—and collecting Republicans abandon Donald is if he fucks a child or wakes up in suddenly, in the brief interval between the Iowa collapse of Joe the pasha of the Upper East Side, as important in his way to the city some huge consulting paychecks in the process. bed next to a dead person,’ ” says an acquaintance, putting his spin Biden and the appearance of Bloomberg himself on a Nevada as the Astors and as foreign to actual voters. But Bloomberg has Bloomberg officially announced his candidacy on November 24, on Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards’s famous old line. The cam- debate stage, it seems possible that a plutocrat could waltz his way loomed as a David Koch–like figure in the Democratic Party in signaling immediately that he’d skip the first four states and just paign responds, “Mike does not remember saying this.” to the Democratic nomination as comfortably as he had to the New recent years, spending $65 million on the 2016 election and over focus on the races beginning Super Tuesday. The Iowa-caucus Throughout 2019, Bloomberg, like many older politicians also York City mayoralty, including an extralegal third term. How $112 million on the midterms two years later—meaning he is now counting app blowing up on February 3 was the stroke of luck feeling their mortality, John Kerry among them, watched as War- plausible a fever dream? The reporters are themselves unsure. One not just one of two or three or four serious Democratic candidates Bloomberg needed to move up in the polls, after which he smartly ren became the presumptive nominee, then faded, and looked of them, picking at a coconut-yogurt-açai-organic-oat bowl, asks for president (depending on how you count) but also, in recent capitalized on the chaos by doubling his ad spending (“Obviously a again at Biden and thought, How is this guy this bad, and this somewhat idly, “Were there real people there last night?”— history, the party’s most important benefactor and donor. flex,” as one of his staffers jocularly put it to me). Bloomberg had bet broke, and still winning? For years and years, Bloomberg had an meaning, was it stocked with paid Bloomberg staffers and spouses In 2019, he gave $3.3 billion away, more than Trump’s entire esti- on no clear front-runner coming out of Iowa, then Biden getting apparatus continually monitoring his chances—maintaining, just and neighbors or were the bodies in the hall actual Bloomberg mated net worth of $3.1 billion—and the largesse has apparently soft, then the moderate lane falling apart, then Sanders or Warren as a kind of casual, on-the-side, not-so-serious exploratory team, supporters? “They were real people,” says a tall cameraman, made everyone very happy to see him at almost all times, which may arising as the default victor, then a collective buyer’s remorse that as big a campaign as most candidates would have as they cocking his head. “It was kind of amazing.” have given Bloomberg the idea that a presidential campaign could would allow him to swipe the victory out of his or her hands. But this approached the Iowa caucuses. He also gathered intelligence anec- Nearby, the would-be savior of the Democratic Party is resting feature more of the same. Yet those who know him best have often was better than in his dreams. And it came so cheap! Bloomberg’s dotally, canvassing his clique. “We had a couple pretty long conver- in a car. Punctual and perfectionistic, the kind of guy who has thought it wouldn’t be easy. “Mike is not going to arrive as JFK rein- self-funding was $5.6 million per day. Given that Bloomberg’s for- sations, with me quizzing him and him trying to get an evaluation advised people not to take bathroom breaks and once said “I don’t carnated,” says Tom Brokaw, an old friend. “That’s not who he is. He’s tune earns $107 million per day, according to the Washington Post, for what the odds were,” says Brokaw. “The more he looked at it, the have anything in common with people who stand on escalators,” a different cat altogether.” Joanna Coles, a television producer and he could comfortably go a lot higher still. (Biden, then the putative more he thought, I do have a shot. And the more he felt a civic Bloomberg had arrived early in his plane and soon strides up to the the former chief content officer at Hearst, says, “He’s hypercurious, front-runner, had raised $8.9 million in all of January.) obligation.” “My dad often tells me regret is not an emotion that he café alongside Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo, a former supersmart, and restless.