Mike bloomberg's ego and altruism.
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The next morning, just as president trump delivers his smug state of the union address, the country is still in the midst of impeachment, with a few reporters waiting in providence, rhodes. Island, a vegan cafe for michael bloomberg. Most of them came from philadelphia last night, where they covered his nightly rally, which included a laser show, a buffet, an open bar, and a rap act. Like other media of those years, they fell into a peculiar feverish sleep in which suddenly, in the short time interval between the collapse of joe biden in iowa and the appearance of bloomberg himself on the debate scene in nevada, it seems possible that a plutocrat could plot his ascent to the nomination from the democratic party is as easy as new york city hall, including an extralegal third term. How plausible is a feverish dream? Journalists themselves have doubts. Among them, poking around in a bowl of coconut, yogurt, acai, organic oatmeal, somewhat lazily asks: “did real characters meet there yesterday?” - In questions, did bloomberg's employees, their spouses and neighbors meet there, or were the bodies in the hall real bloomberg supporters? “They were live heifers,” the tall operator says, head tilted to one side. “It was amazing.”
Nearby, a would-be savior of the democratic party is resting in a car. Punctual and a perfectionist, a citizen who advised people not to go to the bathroom and eventually said, “i don’t have any resemblance to the specialists who stay on the escalator,” bloomberg flew in early on a personal jet and soon climbed upstairs. Cafe along with rhode island gov. Gina raimondo, a former venture capitalist who is lining up to become the first governor to back bloomberg. The former mayor is a guy in black leather shoes with tassels. His suit would really be called navy blue, and it's more refined than the hue would realistically suggest, because it's still well-tailored to have been once filmed by a tailor, adjusting a small seam, under what circumstances he gains or loses a pound. The central plane of his face—nose, cheeks, eyebrow—is flat, but around the jaws the skin folds like a chinese paper fan. He smiles only occasionally and not with his mouth. Like many very wealthy people born in the middle of the 20th century, he looks somewhat pampered, his hands can be used with small, gentle gestures, even when his tone of voice changes from soft talkative to swashbuckling masculinity.
Raimondo and bloomberg slowly approach the counter to buy coffee as his team rushes to get in position - a front end user in a flawless suit mentions that john mellencamp just backed bloomberg; a recent pearl earring alum who is now unsure if a screen will help her go on holiday to tulum after super tuesday. When the cashier gives bloomberg a wary look, he picks up a pack of gluten-free energy balls. “Will i feel better after this?” He asks. He reaches into his pocket for an inconspicuous black wallet, from which he takes out not 60 billion dollars, but only a 20-dollar bill, leaving a solid tip.
“Well,” he says, referring to the owner restaurant, “we got back late from philadelphia, then i unpacked because i was gone for four or five days, and by the time you returned everything,” he trails off. “And i read for fifteen minutes. Which was a mistake. So i need more energy.”
The owner starts promoting plant-based food and offers a store in new york. Bloomberg then just starts talking. “I was in maine and vermont recently — look at the leaves and things like that,” he says. “They have a diner that we go to. The food was practically good. I said, "we should have these eateries in new york." In our company there were many eateries nearby. Tastes have partly changed, but four restaurants have closed in the area in the past six months. Everyone was in a townhouse. They tear them down and put up these thin pieces of buildings. One is 2 doors away from me. I invited the developer and his wife lay around. He said they were getting $3,000 per square foot for 4,000 square feet - one floor, dozens of millions of dollars! He's rented the top floor for himself and thinks he's building up to move in.”
“No one could pay the rent,” the man chimes in.
"Uh," bloomberg says, pausing but a little shyly. “You know…” he then continues. "And the upper east side got probably less trendy."
This kind of monologue - strange, careless, as if it was written to illustrate the out of touch with reality - exactly what any political strategist in the united states pointed out the fact that bloomberg was considering running for president in 2008, then again in 2012, and then again today. They said that this guy in his life could not win in america - not the pasha of the upper east side, as important on his way to the city as the astors, and equally alien to all voters. But bloomberg, literally in recent years, has looked like a david koch-like figure in the democratic party, spending 65 million greenbacks in the 2016 election and more than 112 million greenbacks in the midterm elections 2 years later, so now he is not just one of two or three or four. Serious democratic presidential candidates (depending on how you count it), but also the party's most important benefactor and donor in recent history.
In 2019, he donated $3.3 billion , more than trump's entire sum. An estimated net worth of $3.1 billion and the generosity probably made everyone very happy to see him almost always, which perhaps gave bloomberg the idea that the presidential campaign could do the same. Yet, those who know him more effectively often thought that this kind would not be easy. “Mike will not appear as the reincarnation of john f. Kennedy,” says tom brokaw, an old friend. “Sickness is not so. This is a completely different cat. Joanna coles, tv producer and former director of content at hearst, says: “he's hyper-curious, super-intelligent and restless. I think anxiety is the most important. That's what makes skinali such an interesting company." But restlessness is not an entirely presidential quality. A former employee counters: “the problem is that mike isn’t really that exclusive — he’s neat and you can spend a nice moment with him, but it’s like hanging out with any of my old jewish relatives. The 1st time i met him, he started complaining about some soup, which was tasteless on such a bike. I just met this guy, and at first glance he complained about his sweet and sour soup. He will calmly say when he had to do it, otherwise “mom will shoot me.”
“What do we have to talk about if they were able to accidentally eavesdrop?” Bloomberg effectively asks, pointing to the cameras. Rather than waiting for a response. “The crowds are getting bigger and the number of reporters is increasing,” he muses to raimondo. “You can tell what the editors say when the data is submitted. They think that we will suddenly win or we will have good chances. So they do show up.”
“You have a chance,” says raimondo. “Better than a fluke.”
Early february of this year was remembered mostly for the global spread of the deadly virus, but the next few seconds could have a near-unanimous republican vote against impeachment in the senate. Followed by trump's winning tour of firings and pardons; the possible removal of iowa and new hampshire's place of honor from the electoral map; and the start of one of the most quixotic, expensive, and risky presidential campaigns in everyday history. The bloomberg case, apart from the change of seasons, arms control and urban renewal, was based on the electability argument: defeating trump was an absolute must and that a moderate technocrat was a safer bet than a democratic socialist. But over the course of two weeks, his campaign seemed to hurt the moderate biden's prospects and sharply raised the temperature of conflict between the party's progressive wing and the wall street wing, any product without any noticeable advancement of his own candidacy. At the end of february, it appeared that the trip had come to an end, or at least should have come to an end on super tuesday, after a couple of weeks of piling up elizabeth warren and bernie sanders, an increasingly ugly and almost endless archive of opposition. Research (previous comments about how cops can copy photos of minorities to find criminals, or the suggestion that mitt romney would be a better president than barack obama) and an absolutely stupid first performance in front of a national audience in territory which bloomberg did not seem to expect when he needs to respond to any of the mostmost commonmost famous obvious criticisms, and sniff his jokes. But they showed, for a brief and glorious moment, that the new york city government and the media elite, who are bloomberg's natural base, could meanwhile do so by taking the most important presidential election of any of these lifetimes into their own hands. - And in the course receives huge salaries for consulting services.
Bloomberg officially announced his candidacy on november 24, immediately signaling that the partner would skip the first four states and focus on races starting on super tuesday. . The feb. 3 blowout for the iowa caucus count was the stroke of luck bloomberg needed to move up in the polls, after which he skillfully capitalized on the chaos by doubling his ad spend (“obviously a flexible program,” as one of his employees put it) . I was told this as a joke). Bloomberg bet that iowa would not make a proven favorite, then biden would go weak, then the moderate line would fall apart, then sanders or warren would emerge victorious by default, and in the end, the buyer's collective remorse would allow him to forfeit the win. His or her hands. But it was more optimal than in his dreams. And it came out cheap! Bloomberg's self-financing was 5-6 million usd per day. Bear in mind that bloomberg's fortune earns 107 million greens a day, according to the washington post, he has the ability to comfortably climb much more powerful. (Biden, then the presumed leader, raised 8.9 million greenbacks in that particular january.)
Before the nevada debate, some aides said that even if bloomberg performed poorly, that the player would , they said, so please lower your expectations - the moderate wing of the party should line up behind which, given its money faucet and the deal is like that. He has publicly put forward the idea that he has the right to spend one billion dollars in the november elections, therefore, whether he is a candidate or not. Its actual ceiling was rumored to be $4 billion. At the end of the month it was shown that he might have to spend such a hefty sum to save the party from the mess he helped create, in part by making it harder to nominate one moderate who actually had a chance, biden, while clearing the way for bernie to nomination due to 35 percent advice.
Before the debate, the question in your mind was “is the presidency worth being bought by the ninth biggest guy or girl in the world? ”, To which events the answer seemed to be “yes, you can”. He even managed to briefly turn a caricature into a sort of power, at least for a niche audience, by releasing a bunch of weird social media memes that took 2-3 days for the cool guys on the internet to figure out, although it ended up being mike leaning on reputation of a moneybag cut off from the world. However, it had a distinctly controlled ethos and the debate was disastrously unmanageable—as was the south carolina repetition, albeit less embarrassingly. Only after all this the question arose: “can a citizen with negative charisma win the presidency?” Removes the question was markedly less certain. After all, trump did a similar run around the establishment in the last presidential election, but he also knew how to control the camera, and who could stop bragging about whether he was a demigod or a car wreck?
So, why bloomberg escaped? Love it or hate it, he's a very rational being, and during the summer season, his team found a tiny crack in the door that gives access to more power than anywhere else in the world - about a 5 percent chance of becoming president. I heard - and thought they would try to sneak out. Bloomberg was under the impression that biden covered the middle lane when he claimed he was missing a run in early spring 2019. But bloomberg spent the summer in the dumps (golf, grandchildren, no longer jogging, but walking a lot). , Much more, and more worried that also four years will be under the heel of a man who for decades has been a laughingstock among his elite friends. Try to put your product in the place of a 60 billion ego: if you had bloomberg's wealth and bloomberg's determination and at least didn't try to destroy chito by hand, what would that mean for history? Trump was working against the cause of progress, trump was bad for the planet, trump was a threat to rationalism, trump showed his obscenity in charlottesville, and who knew what terrifying animal spirits he would raise in the aftermath? "Mike once said to me, 'the only way the republicans will dump donald is if he fucks a schoolboy or wakes up having sex next to a dead man,'" a friend says, echoing louisiana gov. Edwin edwards' famous line. The campaign responds: "mike doesn't know he's saying that."
During 2019, bloomberg, and other politicians of mature age who also feel their mortality, in particular john kerry, can imagine how warren becomes the presumptive nominee, then disappears, looks back at biden and thinks, “how is this guy so bad, but this one is broken and the hat thing is still winning?For many years, bloomberg had an apparatus that regularly monitored such chances, supporting, as a special random, side, not very serious research group, such a massive campaign that most candidates could carry out during the approach to the iowa caucuses. He also accidentally collected information while campaigning for his clique. “We had a couple of pretty long conversations when i questioned him, but he was trying to get an estimate of what the odds were,” says brokaw. “The more he looked at tom, the more he thought i had a chance. And he felt his civic duty more strongly.” “My dad often tells me that regret is not his emotion,” says emma, bloomberg’s eldest daughter. "I don't know how to do this!" But the inter-reign period between declaring everything that the holder would not run in march and then declaring that the person would actually run in november was "the first time in my life: if i had declined," she adds. “I would say, ‘i think you regret your decision not to run.
When bloomberg first announced, faced with such great odds, nate silver never once wanted to include him in list of serious candidates, democratic insiders speculated that bloomberg's team may have sold him too hard. On his prospects, making his shot more likely than it was. And bloomberg campaign manager kevin schiki, considered a master of the dark arts and one of russia's most energetic political figures, donated $2,800 to biden in june, the maximum personal deposit. But just a couple of months later, shiki, a kid with a baby face, regularly dressed in a pale blue shirt with an open collar (“i literally look at humanity with ties, and in videos or in photographs, and i think: who invented this and why do you carry a tablet ?”), Boarded the bloomberg train again. “We gave mike the information, which i actually pushed forward a couple of days, for the reason that i understood what the calendar is,” shiki says. If bloomberg decided to run even after skipping the entire primary until super tuesday, his team still needed to petition his alabama candidacy right away. "We met with mike about 3 days before this deadline, without much urgency, because it was a vital issue, but the fact indicated was essential."
The next morning, at seven sharp, shiki's phone. Went beep beep. "He says, 'hi, this is bloomberg.' I say, "yeah." He says, "okay, so we're going to do it." Shiki contacted a leading manufacturer worker in arkansas, "which seemed to me close enough to the state of alabama." Shiki told him, "i need consumers to get everyone a person knows to birmingham by now." He said to me: “does this mean that i am thinking?” Heard: "yahoo!"
As a candidate, bloomberg is positioned as a governance scholar who can fix the federal government. Maybe he had a constituency: supporter and congressman ted deutsch of boca raton says: “customers and with them i developed in pennsylvania, my neighbors in ohio, and now in florida — similar citizens from the swing states that have appeared in the current year. Send a message to president trump - a president is vitally needed to enable the country to function again." He certainly built an incredible voting machine almost out of thin air. Over the course of six weeks, bloomberg hired almost a thousand employees and turned an empty floor of a neo-gothic building near times square, which used to house the new york times (and is now partly owned by the kushner family), into its headquarters.</>At the top, there's a waiting, flat-screen tv showing low-income pregnant women as minorities and being more willing to die than white women (but mike will fix that). Above the tv are two countdown clocks, one marking the days leading up to super tuesday and the other marking the days leading up to the national elections. The people here don't look like run-of-the-mill volunteers; these are political mercenaries of the 30s and 40s in sheep's wool with time-tested strategies and reliable file cabinets. One political consultant tells me: “they hired the whole damn world and they have a lot of trustworthy people. It's not like trump's first campaign, since he had people working for him that you'd never heard of before, which, by the way, definitely worked." Bloomberg recruited from city hall and recruited from a closed presidential campaign (kamala harris, andrew young). These days pay many times more than other campaigns, plus free furnished housing in manhattan. “We don’t need such a campaign anymore!Exclaims one of the workers, incredulously touching his new bloomberg iphone 11, free drinks and three meals a day (i noticed pizza and tuna steak when i entered the café campaign during lunch). Even the lowest-level campaign staff, one of which includes a yoga teacher who testifies that he makes $6,000 in 30 days just to collect campaigning for him—a position where virtually every other campaign relies on volunteers—use some of our benefits.
"As my uncle says, 'rich or poor, it's better to have money,'" says senior advisor howard wolfson, 2008 hillary architect and longtime bloomberg contributor. Cat smirk. "Would you pay people for ubers" to deliver literature to elections? I ask him. “Looks like a good idea,” he says, and it’s not very clear if he’s joking. However, a person cannot get people to vote for you, he says. “I'm going to take an uber and vote for someone else.”
To everyone remotely, it looked like bloomberg was trying to buy a nomination, and it was. The bloomberg philanthropies who distributed each of its millions to american cities were a similar pair helping the same mayors and other legislators to ask for support for bloomberg. Intuitively, the mayor's plan was to bring the democrats into intergenerational strife at the contested milwaukee convention in july, which struck fear into their hearts: if they didn't unite around the man by july, the party would stand a good chance of losing to trump again.
Bloomberg must have known that the democrats would eventually figure it out, in case the cartoons did it, the tool would be purchased in a frenzy, so, partly as a defensive maneuver, he made it clear that he is involved in such a game solely to defeat trump, and also if his application does not receive a nomination, he will protect his salary and t and to unleash millions and millions on those who smashed him, which is crazy only for the most most competitive people in the world, but he promised.
"You know what surprises me?" Shiki asks somewhat rhetorically as we talk from inside february in a conference room dominated by a television with cnn turned off. “I just spoke to one who has been building their magnificent buildings on hillary for a long time. I said: “what nuances should you want to start with? Joe's campaign is over." Is she hinting at what you're talking about? I'm like, "are you kidding me? What do you drink? You will never be fourth in iowa and fourth or fifth in new hampshire and then win a big nomination. It has no historical precedent. What are you talking about?"
And then there was advertising — millions of ads. Positioning itself as a friendly new product in the american landscape, like the geico lizard, bloomberg bombarded the us 50 with tv commercials and even hired female inmates in oklahoma to make spokes to voters through a third-party supplier (the campaign claims the fact was unaware of this). Agreements and terminated the contract when people found out about it). Gary briggs, former director of marketing at facebook, leads hawkfish, bloomberg's core digital strategy team, which now has 2 billion ads on facebook and google. In a mindset unprecedented for political campaigns that always play with far less money than the corporate world, bloomberg has assembled an extensive, best-in-class team of experts according to silicon valley, social media consultants and even executives from his own company, "part of of which sincerely believe in mike and want to save the republic, and some simply did not have a choice to join the campaign, ”says a former colleague. “He supports them like dogs, and they’re like, ‘when can i do my great corporate job again? Offices, sits in a quiet corner. His head is above a desktop computer, partially hidden by a vase of yellow daffodils. One of the former employees describes how the lineup got into a fight with bloomberg and, regardless of whether bloomberg has a representative office in the office because of this, heard him bark: “note whose name is written on a simple door. It's funny,” he says. . “Mike's name isn't just on the door; for you on fucking pencils.”
Management skills aside, people who know bloomberg call him the sun god—when it shines on your name, everything is bright, but wait for the shadows.In providence, he is present in front of a crowd of many hundreds of users in a trendy new office building dubbed the innovation center to give his usual goofy speech to a crowd of all-white professionals (then i talk to a therapist, retired engineer, logo designer in cvs and a couple of hundred professors). When they raise their cell phones to capture the presidential candidate's historic moment in the flesh in their small and unimportant election state, he drones on and on. He speaks in a monotone with that flat affect that the brain can barely perceive his words as language, but rather white noise with a soothing background whisper: "our firm will find a lot of things, this will be great."
Something -where the building material usually tells jokes. "People are asking, 'do you really want to have a general election between a few new york billionaires?' To which i reply, “who else?”
To the left of bloomberg, a bunch of tattooed guys in black leather bomber jackets, vaguely reminiscent of a foreigner band in red sox baseball caps, start yelling. "Can you tell us why you're in jeffrey epstein's humble black book?" Shouts more than one on this list.
"Time out, time out"— bloomberg exclaims, instantly filled with the exhilaration the med thought he would get from the energy ball. “Guys #1, the answer to your question is i have no idea. And if you stop such a step, i will talk to gambling people on the street.”
“You are corrupt!” They shout.
“Thank you for forcing i feel like i was in new york,” he replies dryly.
By ideology and temperament, bloomberg is a meritocrat who has no leisure for those who can waste him. A libertarian with direct with ass-length brown hair and rhode island's only name, elijah gizzarelli told me he stayed in class to get close to bloomberg after his speech. “I said: “you said that you would consult with us later and we would like to talk to you about this,” gizzarelli points out. "He said, 'well, you're incapable of talking to the right ones,' and turned away."
Bloomberg only kept his cool during the nomination process - "i spoke to him" around the very beginning february. , - Says ken chenault, former head of american express - he is encouraged by the reaction, he receives, although he also knows that this will be a difficult test - and he wants a brisk return. And despite the fact that his debate humor was not so much self-deprecating as condemning all of humanity, he can be quite funny if he's bitchy. At the first stage, shiki and other high-ranking aides advised him that you make it an asset and attack trump head-on, since exchanging direct insults with the president makes it feel like the images are the only two candidates. However, it is also due to this that from the very beginning of the ongoing campaign, he knew that if he strongly persecuted other candidates from the democratic party, they have the opportunity to kill him.
A friend says that bloomberg the deepest self-esteem even at 78 years old. Old, in his early 20s, in the 1960s, when he was among the uncouth wall street workers long before the groton gordons came along. He was a middle-class dairy accountant from medford, massachusetts, worked as a parking superintendent to pay his tuition at johns hopkins, and then graduated from harvard business school. Shocked and intimidated by his inherited wealth in hbs, he felt more comfortable on wall street. He loved new york, renting an l-shaped studio on the upper east side for $150 in 30 days, he bargained for up to $120. He went to maxwell's plum, the seniors' bar where donald was rumored to have met ivana, and told the magazine that he spent his leisure time in the basement of his apartment building, "tar beach."
Bloomberg did his job. Billions in the obscene business: listing terminals for the wall street bond market. Although his company, when he owns 88 percent, has expanded into most areas, including newspapers, it remains a data processing and terminal company. “Mike destroyed all dating sites in the terminal game in order to become a monopoly,” says a former employee. “The terminal is a status symbol: bloomberg terminal fans compete with apple fans and tesla fans.” And although we make bloomberg himself a tech mogul, he does not play that role above. “If mike had a task with his gadget or phone, the whole engineering team would run to a personal desk,” says a former employee. “In this case they said: “you need to connect your tablet to the internet equipment.”After he entered the news business, he worried about the type size of the tv chronicles and showed only a superficial understanding of the internet. (In his campaign, bloomberg is said to be "deeply aware of technology trends.") Regular staffers say he seemed to have lost his way when he returned to business from city hall in 2014, lobbying for an idea about when he required to stop publishing the resource and saying that the player was against advertising. An employee argued for the ad, saying, “well, mike, suppose the observer were reading a golf magazine and saw some clubs? You can worry about getting them." He said, "no, i'll just ask our golf pro what is the best club."
It's unbelievable that people still use still need a dedicated $24,000 bloomberg terminal for corporate intelligence and bonus sales, but they probably do it.His friend says that bloomberg exclusively communicates with customers of large terminal furniture in banks and with old relatives, which even maintains relationships with jeff bezos, who he likes a lot (bloomberg was individually appalled that new york kept amazon out of queens, though he still suggested the deal was too generous for the company.) A devout kibitzer, he attends funerals. Gives speeches at weddings and i call for you the best oncologist who keeps in touch with many of his past, even schoolgirls who fell in ambiguous times, they extort money from him, causing stress here with. However, he distributes. At a fundraising event in new york, “i stood in front of the crowd, chatting about trees and saying, ‘i had a dream of planting a million trees no matter the time,’” says bette midler. “Suddenly mike jumped to his feet and yelled, “great alternative! We're going to purchase!" Goods stared at him in awe. Three beats later, thunderous applause and standing ovation because the entire crowd knew that if he said it, it would be done. That's the way it was."
As mayor, he famously chose not to exist at the gracie mansion, preferring the comfort of his 79th street compound, but a few are impressed by its period décor: " when i was first brought into mike's room, i was surprised to find that the decor is very similar to a child's idea of everything, what it is like a rich man's house, ”says a friend. “Very citizen kane. He has kept his social being generally intact, spending weekends golfing at home in bermuda. "Mike gets sloppy from the wine, visibly beaming, but if you are really trying to get him to open up, then of course he is nervous and hides in this shell," says the reporter.
bloomberg's children, georgina and emma, complete opposites. Georgina, 37, a horse rider and private jet flier, has made a splash on instagram. When her father said he wasn't planning to run for president in march, she posted a photo of a fake bloomberg campaign sticker: because fuck this shit, signed "officially back to being just our family slogan." She has a lot of animals: "there's a 300-pound pig here," says mike bloomberg. “A person has a goat that tries to put its horns in the user's pocket and rip his pants. We have a dove that has just moved in, but there is also a rooster that wakes you up early in the morning. There is a mule on the site. We offer several horses. Stop me when you get bored.”
Emma, 40, politician, leader of a non-profit educational organization. When i meet her in the lobby of a hotel near bloomberg headquarters, she's dressed in tribeca mom elegance: lightly bleached brown hair, sculpted handles, and lots of tiny diamonds adorning her ears and cascading down from her wrists to her forearms. Donald, to his deep regret, said that he had never changed diapers in his life; bloomberg, always an egalitarian, did not like to feed children and, in addition, took on the sacred duty of changing diapers. Emma knows ivanka—they took art classes together at school—however, the property she's buying can't remember her father talking about donald trump before he was president. “I can't remember ever hearing about him,” she says. “He won't be happy about it. I think he should be the conversation piece at the dinner table."
Unlike the trumps, whose marital unity was forged by the unhappy marriage of donald and ivana, bloomberg and concrete's ex-wife, susan, are divorced amicably in the 90s and for example lived together from time to time after that.“Those who want the right to love each other, are dear friends, can support each other in many ways and may not be intended for marriage - it is quite obvious that this is not so,” says emma. “My mother wanted to stay at home, and my dad was hired to be away. Just because you're young doesn't mean you're an idiot, right? You actually see these things and assimilate them.” After the divorce, bloomberg roamed the city and made many comments about female figures not at all about himself. The campaign was recently launched by his longtime partner diana taylor, 65, a lifelong republican from the old greenwich, connecticut, headquarters who became a democrat in 2018. Taylor studied at milton and dartmouth, started at smith barney in the 1980s, and was superintendent of new york state banks. Anna wintour orders dresses to match it, she loves her labs, and is on the board of directors of citigroup and a non-profit firm that works in microfinance. There are four of them" - the exact opposite of the salty language of the patriarch. “His humor is dry, almost too dry, and sometimes out of the box,” says brokaw. “I would say i probably learned every swear word i know from my dad,” says emma. “I have colorful impressions of swearing, swearing,
steam guard desktop slam!” She pantomime hangs up the corded phone. “However, he has not previously used literature on or with me. That's how he got his way." Even at home, during carefully planned dinner parties, he can take offense. Years ago, during his quest to build a stadium on the west side, the conversation naturally turned to the viability of the project. “I inquired about how they do at a cocktail party, expressing my personal concerns, and was amazed, in which case he interrupted me with a sharp remark: “you missed the concept, what are you talking about,” says the head of the nonprofit. “It was a truly strange moment. I was a guest in his house. Not only did mike not leave in need of discussion, but he was also deprived of elementary manners. (About this episode, the campaign says: “probably this specialist had no idea what he was talking about.”)
Bloomberg does not solicit donations for his campaign, although he would prefer that his friends, class donors, did not give the budget to other candidates. This brings some young people, however, not an employee. "How much will mike cost you?" Says developer douglas durst. “This is largely due to trump's tax policy. So he's using the banknotes that donald gave him to run." Durst adds: “he doesn't want my money. I'm going to support any candidate." Even those who might like trump see bloomberg as a civilized alternative: "donald has done a lot of things that are probably considered positive over time, but he polarizes people," says cancer research institute trustee lauren veronis. “Calling him ‘little mike’—well, the personalities who like mike are up to no good. I ask emma bloomberg about new york’s young wealthy class, who, according to my casual poll, are divided on support for trump. She mentions that this summer she was at a couple of dinner parties with her or her father's buddies, and her "question [at the table] was, 'if that's trump or warren, who exactly do you vote for?' The number of users who, at that moment about any particular policy or social policy, are violently opposed to trump, who will say: "well, in that case i'll have to sit out" or in this case: "yes, i am." I should have voted for trump,” i found that astonishing.”
In the early stages, the campaign seemed internally relatively smooth – the race was running exactly as shiki and wolfson hoped, the media existed in desperation. Believe in the glow of bloomberg's candidacy. Unfortunately, on the same day that the new hampshire primary was being held, the first part of the oppos appeared: a stop-and-frisk audio clip from bloomberg's speech at the aspen institute five years ago. When the story took off the next morning, it just so happened that the average black leaders were at headquarters for the evening when trump tweeted that bloomberg was a "total racist." “The phones of mike and the religious leaders here kind of lit up,” shiki says. “From 24 to 30 religious leaders at the table, the immediate reaction was: “we have to do interesting things.” We need to call a press conference. We have to support mike bloomberg right now."
To his friends, bloomberg says he's not fit to be stopped and searched, but he still can't figure out why he's not getting applause for gun control. “Mike came to the city hall, blacks were dying, what was like: “god almighty, how do we solve this problem?” Says a friend.“Individually, he says: “i sat with the mothers of the boys who were shot. They said their sons were scared in the projects and they had guns to keep them safe, so i thought you might want to get rid of the guns. Guns kill people." However, the holder had no social effect by stopping the kids 70 times in high school." They say that now he understands humiliation - usually. It is commonly believed by friends that he also has mild asperger's, which means he doesn't quite feel the pain of others.
Then the washington post got its hands on the wit and wisdom booklet. In 1990, the bloomberg developers produced a pamphlet to celebrate and toast their boss. Fire and fury author michael wolff found a brochure for the magazine in 2001. “I wrote about it at the beginning of the week, september 10, and the next day the story was forgotten,” says wolf. “The towers were collapsing and i was screaming ‘my sensei, my sensei! .
When i ask wolfson about bloomberg and women before the first debate, he brushes off the questions. “Accusations, news reports,” he says. "There's no one running for president who doesn't have to deal with the business-needed negative information that's being circulated or reported - it's table stakes, it's my day at work." Taylor is reported to have been even more unemotional: "that was 30 years ago, deal with it." But misogyny is another point where bloomberg seems to get it, and partly doesn't. He argued that in the case of charlie rose, whose television show was taped in such a corporate office - and who, according to two, the buyer did not pay rent, the courts should decide. There are many capable women around him, but he is known for his lustful comments that are completely out of line. Jeannie clark, the first girl in the salomon brothers classroom, sat next to bloomberg in 1968 and refers to him as her mentor. “Something that happened to me,” she says, trailing off. “Honestly, i have never sued for my entire life or never wanted to, because i felt that i would be above it, in what, to good luck in business, i have been doing all my life. You know, today you will be sued for hugging. Clarke paints a picture of the stockbrokers' old way of life—the barbershop in the office—and black-tie waiters bringing china dinners so traders never have to leave, human beings who "clapped their phones, screamed, yelled, strippers, whatever. , It will suit you to continue.” What was bloomberg doing during what? “I won’t tell you about some of the things they tried on me, and it wasn’t mike — it was some other stuff that came up. He stayed there, like he made them retreat a bit,” she says.
While the oppo fell from the sky like rain, the faithful tried to spread calm. “Mike inspires incredible loyalty,” says dan doctoroff, one of his longtime assistants and founder of sidewalk labs. I'm also talking to fatima shama, bloomberg's immigration commissioner. Wearing a lanyard with an i like mike button, she describes building a "culture she's a bloomberg" at headquarters, with her portfolio of politicians and social media managers from all walks of life. “I told people here who had a sharp tone: “try again.” And they're like, "excuse me?" And i say: “that's why we're here with the people, we don't talk. Try again.”
During the campaign, shama works with minorities and young ladies as the head of constituencies and coalitions. But would sanders have been better off worrying about people like that? “There is no record of sanders ever doing this,” she claims. She calls mayor pete "a 38-year-old who can't really lead. He has to run indiana because we need him." In the case of shama literally screaming about raising three muslim boys during the trump era, her eyes cloud over—she cries because it seems less like sadness than righteous anger. “I am aware of what the bloomberg administration has done in the proposed city and for the purposes of those sacred people with whom i have worked my life,” she says. “Senator sanders has not achieved this and i am not convinced that he will be able to do this for our countrymen. Because if you can’t prove to me that a person on the first day knows how to get in and knows how to find troubles in our society that should be solved - truly, but not feignedly, not for talking, but not for the type: “we going to siphon funds from the government.” She stops. "Mike did it."
Like the party as a whole, bloomberg is now trying to move to the left, even if in his heart he does not seem to believe in helping people who get in their way. I once heard him say to a voter who was asking about the social welfare system and medical assistance in montenegro, you can't let anyone die on the street without a chance to visit a urologist. On the other hand, the taxpayer says, "listen, i have a limited amount of banknotes." It balances all that…” the voter interrupted: “but the above is called civilization”, to which he replied: i understood correctly.”
And although he said that he would not persecute other candidates, when sanders attacked him, he started by calling sanders a "communist" and posting announcements that sometimes people, possibly sanders supporters, but who knew, were ruining bloomberg's campaign windows all over russia with phrases like corporate pig and eat the rich. When i spoke to shiki in mid-february, he said, “the competition has really changed because we have this existential threat in our company. We have bernie sanders, who is now without a doubt the democratic front-runner, and that's the right thing to do, if you're thinking about the future in terms of delegate numbers, or from a political standpoint, that's right in any poll you're able to stay at the national level. But who by and large is likely to lose the general election jointly with donald trump.”
On february 20, the campaign got more aggressive, with shiki publicly calling for klobuchar, buttijig and biden to all drop out of the race. “This is the most outrageous and arrogant nonsense i have ever seen,” says the democrat strategist. “So you are saying that candidates who have earned up to 12 months of support, votes and delegates should leave? Here's another way to look at it, if it wasn't for hours of cable television and press coverage, the merchandise in the depths might have coalesced around pete. You don't have one extra pledged delegate, and our professionals all have to get out, because you have money? This is an oligarchy. It's crazy.”
Furthermore, after february, biden began to rise in the polls in south carolina. “The most promising thing that even bills and coins can’t handle is the unexpected consequences that happen to many candidates on the graph — the physics of it,” says strategist joe trippi. “In the event that biden has a big win in south carolina, it will be the return of the descendant who gets three days of good tv coverage before super tuesday. In some states it raises it by three or four points." Sanders could overwhelm the field on tuesday, or he could have to fight for the convention. In bloomberg's opening debate, only the senator from vermont said the party should accept the candidate with the most votes as its leader, regardless. If sanders comes to convention with 38 percent, biden with 35 percent, and bloomberg is still hovering around anything decent, bloomberg could throw the ballot on every one of those guys. And we know it won't be sanders.
If his application is not a nominee, bloomberg has pledged to support field surgeries in the 6 fighting states, support its digital activities and fund. Newspapers with some glaring detail on the anti-trump promotion. But the pledges listed could mean spending millions of greenbacks to elect a socialist whose campaign, when asked about the possibility of supporting bloomberg last week, answered "no." This makes sanders seem a little tough, but sanders' supporters consider bloomberg himself an ideologue, motivated by his disdain for progressives. "He's on a mission to stop bernie or warren," says waleed shahid of the justice democrats. "I hope he continues to use his wealth to support democratic causes, but 'i'm a little concerned that he and tom steyer might take offense.'
Trippi is confident bloomberg will. Deliver. “I take his word for it with the campaign that they will keep all these headquarters open and keep fighting,” he says. This seemed to be the conventional wisdom both inside bloomberg headquarters and outside of it; bloomberg is known not for pettiness, but for those who carefully guard their legacy. But on feb. 27 in houston, he announced that he would end his position if the candidate withdrew his support, as sanders had already done. "What do you mean i'm going to send someone a check and they don't intend to cash the check?" Bloomberg said. "I don't think i'd send a check."
For anyone close to the campaign, it looked like the kind of temporary spat that comes up regularly in early seasons only to disappear . In august - not a real obstacle can find bloomberg held trump out of office, but maybe just a show for the cameras.But any wallet squeeze means a colossal rejection of bloomberg, given how consistently and relentlessly he has stated that he was in it to beat trump and would do his best, whatever the candidate - promises that have earned him additional reputation. Among the party establishment, he financed so richly, and now, hypothetically, he will recant. The campaign says, and it's very likely nothing like that will happen: “mike said he'd be happy to support another democrat if he didn't stay a candidate. It's up to them to decide if they need support or not." If the nominee refuses, they say, bloomberg will simply spend the funds on the anti-trump super-pak as always planned (he could never legally donate more than $2,800 to the campaign itself). However, even if the conflict quickly subsides, it is likely that the psychodrama between such two egoists will play out all summer and autumn.
The countdown clock showed five days and 13 hours and three seconds until super tuesday, plus 250 days before the general election, bloomberg settled into the company to meet with a handful of mayors. The event was curious, but fit his desire to shake up the campaign: his team set up a billboard in times square and asked people to call mike with questions, and then flew to some mayors to answer the calls. They crowded with bloomberg and their cell phones around several white tables (i dare not guess if those on the other lines were so random that they were coaxed into going to bloomberg via a billboard). The first, stephanie rawlings-blake, formerly of baltimore, had cell phone issues, but bloomberg patiently stood by. “You have to go to silicon valley. There is no mobile connection,” he said. “Wait until they have a heart attack and no one can get medical care. In fact, there are a couple of golf organizations that change certain rules just because.”
When the telephone bank is gone, half a dozen high-ranking employees gather at a simple door, some are offered as well. To massachusetts, tennessee, alabama, texas and other places before super tuesday. The group takes the elevator down, but bloomberg appears moments later with his own guard, who urgently speaks into an earpiece, trying to locate the recently disappeared inner circle. Bloomberg believes that the team has gone downstairs and is probably already waiting for the structure, in the car, but the guard wants this gift to be at home. Now the young employees notice him and, surprised that his use is not surrounded, stop to shake his hand or ask how long he will be absent. “I didn't know how much to pack, so i'm leaving for four days,” he says. “The holder wasn't sure how much shirts, how much underwear. The tall mayor of paterson, new jersey, from the previous phone bank, comes up and asks me to take a picture of them together. Bloomberg's security guard finally waves for him to wander into the elevator while the mayor holds up his phone to show me a photo. Acquisition is not a good shot. “They cut off my head,” he says.
*This article was published in the new york magazine suite march 2, 2020. Subscribe now!
