美国国家公共电台 NPR Michael Bloomberg Has Already Spent More Than $100 Million On Campaign Ads（在线收听）

NOEL KING, HOST:

Money is pouring into the 2020 presidential election. Now, that would likely be the case anyway, but it's especially true this time because there are two billionaires in the Democratic primary who can fund their own campaigns. One of them is New York City's former mayor Michael Bloomberg. He's spending his money not on campaigning in Iowa or New Hampshire but on ads. And it is a lot of money. He's spent more than $100 million already. NPR political correspondent Asma Khalid has been looking into this strategy. Hey, Asma.

ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: Hey, Noel.

KING: So Mike Bloomberg and the environmental activist Tom Steyer are the two self-funded candidates. They are both billionaires. How do they compare to the other Democrats running?

KHALID: Well, first, let me just explain how much they are spending. Collectively, Steyer and Bloomberg have spent about $200 million so far. That's according to Advertising Analytics, a firm that's been tracking campaign ad spending. And really, Noel, that is historic levels of spending.

For some context, the firm says it's about a quarter of all the money that was spent in the 2016 cycle, primaries and general election together. The next biggest spender, though, among the Democrats currently is Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind. And he's only really spent a fraction of what Steyer and Bloomberg have. He is just at around $20 million on ads.

KING: OK. So much, much less. One of the really fascinating things here is that Bloomberg has only been a candidate in this primary for about 30 days, and yet he's already spent this massive sum of money. Is that basically Mike Bloomberg's strategy - spend, spend, spend?

KHALID: Well, I mean, sort of. I mean, he's decided to bypass the first four early voting states. And that in itself is a pretty unusual strategy. The main reason that Michael Bloomberg can do this is because he's one of the richest men in America. You know, he is worth more than $50 billion. And lately, he has been blanketing the airwaves, introducing himself to voters in essentially every single TV market in the country.

(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL AD)

UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Jobs creator, leader, problem solver. Mike Bloomberg for president.

MIKE BLOOMBERG: I'm Mike Bloomberg, and I approve this message.

KHALID: And, Noel, I wanted to understand more about how this strategy is supposed to work, and I'm going to spend a few minutes telling you about that. One person I talked to is Democratic strategist Karen Finney.

KAREN FINNEY: Given the amount of money that he has spent, he's increasing in name recognition, to - by the poll numbers.

KHALID: And Finney is right. As Bloomberg has spent money, you've seen a slow, steady increase in his poll numbers. He's now averaging around 5% nationally, and that's higher than many Democrats who entered this race long before him. Bloomberg has proved that he can finance his own election and win. He did that as mayor of New York City. But Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg says it's not easy, especially in a Democratic primary.

ANNA GREENBERG: Self-funders can win elections, but it's always challenging for them. And there's a kind of perception that you're trying to buy the election, which is quite problematic for some voters. I mean, it's less about someone being a billionaire and more about the idea that they're trying to sort of buy it.

KHALID: Greenberg is not discounting the importance of money. And in fact, she says when she's worked in primaries where nobody really knows any of the candidates, the person who's spent the most money has won. But this Democratic presidential primary is different. People are already plugged into the race.

GREENBERG: You have a lot of candidates that are well-known. You have a lot of very engaged voters following the primary. Somebody coming in with money can't really - it's not a blank slate. People have - already have ideas of who they support. And so it's just much harder for that money to have influence.

KHALID: Bloomberg's money strategy is not just about advertising. It's also about hiring, especially in the states that will vote right after those initial primaries. Here's Karen Finney again.

FINNEY: The recent announcement that he's added 200 staffers on the ground in a number of the March Super Tuesday states, it changes the calculation a little bit for the candidates who are currently in.

KHALID: Bloomberg's strategy is based on the assumption that Democratic voters are anxious and not rallying around any single candidate. And his campaign thinks he has a path if no candidate emerges as the clear favorite after the first few states vote.

STEVE WILLIAMS: You don't need to have early primary states. He's got a network all across the country right now. What he has done nobody - nobody - has been able to match.

KHALID: That's Steve Williams, the mayor of Huntington, W.Va. That network he's referring to - it's mayors all across the country, mayors who trust Bloomberg and feel indebted to him because they've received millions of dollars in grants to build arts centers or fight climate change. After Bloomberg left office, he leveraged his personal fortune into helping other cities. Earlier this month, Williams endorsed Bloomberg, whose foundation gave his city assistance related to the opioid epidemic.

WILLIAMS: Somebody helps you, you help them. And it's amazing how our city has benefited because of Mayor Bloomberg's support.

KHALID: These mayors say it's not just about the money. It's about witnessing Bloomberg's expertise and judgment firsthand. Bloomberg is essentially running a general election campaign in the primaries. Earlier this week, he launched a digital ad depicting Democratic voters in battleground states, warning that Trump could win reelection.

(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL AD)

BLOOMBERG: We need to wake up. In Michigan, the only one campaigning here is Donald Trump.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: As a Pennsylvanian, I understand there's a caucus in Iowa, but what about here?

KHALID: Michael Nutter, the former mayor of Philadelphia, recently endorsed Bloomberg and is now serving as his national political chair. And he says this general election outreach is part of their strategy.

MICHAEL NUTTER: We're going to places where Democrats, for the most part, are not going right now, where we have to win in order to win the White House in 2020.

KHALID: He points to his home state.

NUTTER: Pennsylvania doesn't vote until April, but there's an office now open in Philadelphia, and there'll be others in Pennsylvania way before.

KING: OK, so Asma, Bloomberg is basically trying to address the central question for Democrats, which is, who is the person who can beat President Trump?

KHALID: Yes. And, you know, as we have heard, campaigning in battleground states is a key part of it, but so is money. The Trump campaign and the Republican Party have raised $300 million from January through September, and we're going to get new fundraising numbers soon that will include the last three months, which was the time period of Trump's impeachment battle, so it's likely that, you know, those new numbers are going to be substantially higher. But in essence, Bloomberg's theory is that President Trump has buckets of money to spend, and Democrats need to be able to compete with that.

KING: NPR's Asma Khalid, thanks so much.

KHALID: You're welcome.