by Eric Lendrum
Mega-billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (D-N.Y.) has risen to third place in national polling for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, as reported by The Hill.
In the Morning Consult poll, Bloomberg ties with Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) for third place with 14 percent. Second place is taken by Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) at 24 percent, with former Vice President Joe Biden narrowly taking first at 28 percent.
Bloomberg, whose personal wealth is estimated around $59 billion, has been spending hundreds of millions on advertising for his presidential campaign. After entering the race unusually late in November of last year, Bloomberg has decided to skip the traditional first four state contests (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina), in favor of focusing on the states scheduled to vote on Super Tuesday, which is on March 3rd. Among those states are California and Texas, the two largest states in the nation.
Bloomberg was campaigning in Compton, California last night as the Iowa caucuses unfolded. During his speech, he joked about missing out on Iowa, saying “Today there’s something going on in Iowa I heard, something like that,” which elicited laughter from the audience. He then commented on how all of the other candidates had spent the last several months in Iowa while he was campaigning in many other states around the country.
Bloomberg’s decision to skip out on Iowa seems more prescient after the unmitigated disaster that took place there last night and into the early hours of the morning. The Iowa Democratic Party still has refused to release the results of the caucuses, claiming that they were performing “quality control” on the results. This immediately drew widespread backlash on Twitter, with many believing this to be indicative of a coverup by the state party and the Democratic National Committee, after initial projections showed Sanders with a commanding lead and Biden underperforming.
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Eric Lendrum graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was the Secretary of the College Republicans and the founding chairman of the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter. He has interned for Young America’s Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, and the White House, and has worked for numerous campaigns including the 2018 re-election of Congressman Devin Nunes (CA-22).
Photos by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
