Michael Bloomberg Will Not Run for President in 2020

Rather than entering the race himself, Bloomberg intends to plow his political energy and immense personal fortune into other efforts to thwart Trump and his agenda, including an initiative aimed at rapidly accelerating the country’s transition to renewable energy. Bloomberg also expects to be heavily involved in the 2020 general election, organizing and funding opposition to Trump.

Bloomberg’s decision appears to reflect a recognition of the long odds he would face in a Democratic primary campaign, as well as the looming presence of a more prominent moderate Democrat, Joe Biden, as a potential rival for the nomination.

Though Bloomberg is aligned with Democrats on a range of issues like climate change and gun violence, he is also a proudly pro-business moderate in a party that has moved sharply to the left in its rhetoric and policy proposals. And his record on policing as mayor, as well as his generally favorable view of Wall Street, would likely have proved troublesome in a field that is establishing litmus tests on social justice and corporate power.

Bloomberg cautioned Democrats not to shift too far to the left in a Bloomberg News column announcing his decision. He said he believed he could have defeated Trump in a general election but was “clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination in such a crowded field.”

“It’s essential that we nominate a Democrat who will be in the strongest position to defeat Donald Trump and bring our country back together,” Bloomberg wrote. “We cannot allow the primary process to drag the party to an extreme that would diminish our chances in the general election and translate into ‘Four More Years.'”

Bloomberg, 76, notified advisers of his decision Monday, capping months of exhaustive research into the possibility of running as a Democrat. Polling and focus groups found that Bloomberg had a path to the Democratic nomination, his advisers said, but that he would likely struggle to compete if Biden were to run.

By removing himself from consideration, Bloomberg may have the effect of increasing the pressure on Biden to announce a campaign in the coming weeks. The two men have been the most prominent moderates contemplating the 2020 Democratic primary, a contest largely defined so far by candidates well to their left, most notably Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Without Bloomberg joining the fray, armed with his personal wealth and a fearsome political operation, Biden now stands alone in his evident ability to wage a strong campaign on comparatively centrist terms.

In the column announcing his plans, Bloomberg said he had concluded that his time and resources would be better spent campaigning for his favorite causes than pursuing an underdog candidacy. In addition to his new climate campaign, called Beyond Carbon, Bloomberg said he would redouble his efforts to enact gun-control regulations around the country.

“I know there’s much more we can accomplish over the next two years, but only if we stay focused on the work and expand upon it,” Bloomberg said. “And the fact is: a national presidential campaign would limit my ability to do that.”

Bloomberg’s announcement ends the latest of several efforts he has made to pursue the presidency, stretching back a dozen years, and likely marks a final abandonment of his long-standing ambition to capture the White House. Instead, he appears poised to fully embrace his slow-motion transformation into one of the principal financial and organizational backers of the Democratic Party.

Bloomberg came close to running for president in 2016 as an independent candidate, but ultimately concluded that only the nominee of a major party could win.

Had he run this time, Bloomberg could have monopolized a distinctive space in the Democratic field. An avowed technocrat who was first elected mayor as a Republican in 2001, Bloomberg has long combined social liberalism with a bluntly pro-business worldview that would have set him at odds with much of the Democratic base.

Bloomberg and his advisers studied the presidential landscape for months, conducting national and state-level polling and holding focus groups with voters around the country. They concluded that he would have had significant strengths even in a crowded Democratic race, including his biography as a self-made entrepreneur and his extraordinary stature as a philanthropist.

But there were also neon-lit warning signs for Bloomberg in the earliest stages of the Democratic race. Populist liberals, including Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have framed their candidacies around opposing the influence of money in politics — arguments that might have stung Bloomberg with particular force.

So, too, might the scrutiny facing the wider field of Democratic candidates on the issue of criminal justice policy. Other contenders, including Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris of California, have been pushed onto the defensive for having pursued traditional tough-on-crime policies in the past. As mayor of New York, Bloomberg supported stop-and-frisk policing, which was found to target black and Hispanic people disproportionately.

In a September interview, Bloomberg expressed no regret about employing aggressive policing tactics as mayor, and questioned whether many of the allegations arising as a result of #MeToo deserved to be believed. He described his emerging identity as a Democrat as something of a default choice, citing his support for abortion rights.

“It’s impossible to conceive that I could run as a Republican — things like choice, so many of the issues, I’m just way away from where the Republican Party is today,” Bloomberg said.

Despite his areas of friction with the left, Bloomberg’s core policy concerns — gun regulation and fighting climate change — align him far more comfortably with Democrats than with Republicans. And he forged closer relationships with key Democratic leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, during the midterm campaign.

Where Bloomberg has aligned most cleanly with Democrats has been his contempt for Trump, whom he has described routinely as divisive and incompetent. After endorsing Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, Bloomberg threw his political clout wholly behind Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections, spending about $112 million to lift the party and dedicating most of that sum to seizing control of the House.

Bloomberg has been welcomed into the top ranks of the Democratic Party with open arms. On Tuesday, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, praised Bloomberg in glowing language.

“Mike Bloomberg was a great mayor and would have been a strong candidate,” Schumer said in a statement. “I am certain his passion for making the country a better place will continue, albeit not as a candidate, particularly on issues like climate change, guns and curtailing the abuses of President Trump.”

In a boon to Democrats, Bloomberg is expected to keep intact the political operation he assembled for a presidential race, and to deploy it instead on a project to help build Democratic infrastructure for the party’s eventual nominee. Among those involved in the effort are Dan Wagner, who was the chief analytics officer for Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign, and the digital advertising firm Bully Pulpit Interactive.

David Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, confirmed that he had been lending advice to Bloomberg about a possible outside spending effort helping the Democratic Party in the general election. Plouffe said Democrats would be at a serious organizational disadvantage against Trump in some respects, because the president’s campaign would be deploying field staff and conducting intensive research in battleground states while Democrats battle each other for the nomination.

“I think there are huge gaps that need to be filled, and this Bloomberg effort has a chance to be an important — or the important — ingredient,” Plouffe said.

The electoral component of Bloomberg’s agenda, however, is less defined at this than his plans for climate advocacy. His policy advisers are in the process of drawing up a proposal for hastening the United States’ transition away from all carbon energy, and they plan to release the details soon.

Carl Pope, an adviser to Bloomberg, said the draft plan involves eliminating coal power outright by 2030 and massive initiatives to electrify transit infrastructure and buildings, as well as ambitious scientific research projects.

Pope said the plan would differ substantially from the Green New Deal, a proposal backed by liberal Democrats in Congress to reduce carbon emissions to zero, because Bloomberg’s alternative was not also focused on expanding the social safety net.

“We’re speaking to climate,” Pope said. “We’re not trying to do economic security as part of climate.”

Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, a champion of the Green New Deal legislation, called Bloomberg’s announcement “a huge infusion of energy into the movement.”

Markey, who has endorsed Warren for president, suggested Bloomberg had chosen wisely by directing his energy away from the primary.

“I think that Mike realized that his time would be better spent doing rather than talking,” Markey said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.