Trump's team downplays Bloomberg spending $100M in Florida to help Biden, but can it win without key state?
Vice President Mike Pence recently told reporters aboard Air Force Two that President Donald Trump is focusing on the two states of Florida and Arizona in his bid to return to the White House for four more years. However, the president’s campaign said last week that it could accomplish its mission even without winning Florida but admitted that Trump would have to sweep three swing states — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — to make it up.
He won these three states by a narrow margin in 2016 and is trailing his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, in the pre-poll surveys, including in Florida. He would also have to win a state that he lost four years ago, such as Minnesota or New Hampshire. But why did the Trump team say that it could do without winning Florida, which has 29 electoral votes — the joint third with New York after California (55) and Texas (38)?
The Sunshine State came into the spotlight after former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg recently moved to spend a whopping $100 million from his own pocket to bolster Joe Biden’s campaign in Florida. His move was in tune with his pledge made in March that he would do "whatever it takes" to help the Democrats beat Trump in this year’s election.
The billionaire himself was also in the fray briefly and was considered among the potential challengers to Biden in the primary race. But a poor outing on March 3 saw Bloomberg suspend his expensive self-funded campaign and endorse the former vice president.
Bloomberg’s latest pledge follows his donation of millions to help the Democrats win the House in the 2018 midterm elections which was a success. In March this year, Bloomberg transferred $18 million to the Democratic National Committee from his presidential campaign to help the anti-Trump mission. His plan for Florida could put the Trump team in a lot of trouble since the battleground state is key for his re-election (only GOP presidential candidate Calvin Coolidge could win a presidential election despite losing Florida, way back in 1924).
Trump won Florida by just 1.2 percent against Hillary Clinton after the state voted for Barack Obama twice in 2008 and 2012. There is also the fact that Trump campaign's plan to put resources into both Minnesota and New Hampshire to make up for Florida has not seen much of a success. The president’s campaign has struggled in raising funds of late.
Trump plans to spend $100M to boost his campaign
Earlier this month, the president said he would not mind spending $100 million himself to boost his re-election chances ahead of a campaign visit in Florida. "We needed to spend more money up front because of the pandemic and the statements being made by Democrats, which are, again, disinformation. Whatever it takes, we have to win," Trump told reporters.
It is not the first time that billionaires have been found pumping in cash in an American presidential election, however, Bloomberg’s mammoth amount channelized into only one state is something unprecedented.
According to a report in Associated Press, Bloomberg's allies have said that the big investment is in alignment with the man's old strategy in business and politics: to make the most emphatic investment based on data and the right time. In late August, Bloomberg’s political data and digital agency Hawkfish (Bloomberg invested $35 million in that as well) warned of mass chaos on Election Night and said while it appeared that Trump was poised to win his second term, the scenario is likely to change after the mail-on votes are counted.
'Bloomberg is an impact player'
The Trump campaign has tried to downplay Bloomberg's move which many Democrats see as a potential "knock-out blow" to the president but does it have a solid plan to counter it?
“Mike Bloomberg is an impact player,” former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, who served as a co-chair of Bloomberg’s presidential campaign, was quoted as saying by AP. "He's looking across the field. He takes in the data. He looks at the evidence, does the analysis and then determines where to best have his impact to change the course of an election. That’s why he decided to invest so heavily in Florida."
The decision to use so much money in Florida helps the Democratic Party’s overall election strategy, according to Bloomberg's aides. It gives the party an opportunity to use its money in campaigning in other key states and putting the Republican cash machine under pressure to match it. Also if Biden wins big in the peninsula state, it could also go a long way in nullifying the apprehension that Trump could discount the election results.
Also, since Trump has praised Florida’s mail-in ballot system in the past while criticizing that in other states, it would also make it tougher for him to deny Biden’s win if the latter clinches the state handsomely.
Among other contributions that Bloomberg has made towards the Democratic Party’s cause are granting $500,000 to Voto Latino to help register Latino voters and $2 million to the Collective Future group to register the Black voters. He has also given $2 million to Swing left, a group that works towards Democrats getting elected in the swing states.
Bloomberg, however, has not been a Democrat throughout. He was a member of the party initially but changed into a Republican in 2000, ahead of his first run for the office of the NYC mayor. He left the GOP in 2007 but continued as an Independent for more than a decade before returning to the blue party in 2018.