Michael Bloomberg 2016

The Untouchable – Can a good mayor amass too much power?
The New Yorker August 2009
The Bloomberg Way
The mayor of New York on his soda ban, why he doesn’t worry about approval ratings,
governing in the age of Twitter, and the dumbed-down media
The Atlantic, November 2012

The Risk I Will Not Take

By Michael R. Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) Americans today face a profound challenge to preserve our common values and national promise.
Wage stagnation at home and our declining influence abroad have left Americans angry and frustrated. And yet Washington, D.C., offers nothing but gridlock and partisan finger-pointing.
Worse, the current presidential candidates are offering scapegoats instead of solutions, and they are promising results that they can’t possibly deliver. Rather than explaining how they will break the fever of partisanship that is crippling Washington, they are doubling down on dysfunction.
Over the course of American history, both parties have tended to nominate presidential candidates who stay close to and build from the center. But that tradition may be breaking down. Extremism is on the march, and unless we stop it, our problems at home and abroad will grow worse.
Many Americans are understandably dismayed by this, and I share their concerns. The leading Democratic candidates have attacked policies that spurred growth and opportunity under President Bill Clinton — support for trade, charter schools, deficit reduction and the financial sector. Meanwhile, the leading Republican candidates have attacked policies that spurred growth and opportunity under President Ronald Reagan, including immigration reform, compromise on taxes and entitlement reform, and support for bipartisan budgets. Both presidents were problem-solvers, not ideological purists. And both moved the country forward in important ways.

Michael Bloomberg Will Not Enter Presidential Race
(NYT) Michael R. Bloomberg, who for months quietly laid the groundwork to run for president as an independent, will not enter the 2016 campaign, he said Monday, citing his fear that a three-way race could lead to the election of a candidate he thinks would endanger the country: Donald J. Trump.
In a forceful condemnation of his fellow New Yorker, Mr. Bloomberg said Mr. Trump had run “the most divisive and demagogic presidential campaign I can remember, preying on people’s prejudices and fears.” He said he was alarmed by Mr. Trump’s threats to bar Muslim immigrants from entering the country and to initiate trade wars against China and Japan, and he was disturbed by Mr. Trump’s “feigning ignorance of white supremacists,” alluding to Mr. Trump’s initial refusal to disavow support from David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader.
“These moves would divide us at home and compromise our moral leadership around the world,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a column published Monday on Bloomberg View, his opinion site. “The end result would be to embolden our enemies, threaten the security of our allies, and put our own men and women in uniform at greater risk.”
The decision by Mr. Bloomberg, who served three terms as the mayor of New York, ends months of intensive preparation for a candidacy. Convinced that a restive electorate was crying out for nonpartisan, technocratic government, he instructed his closest aides to set up the machinery for a long-shot billion-dollar campaign that would have subjected his image to a scorching political test. …
Had both Mr. Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont appeared headed toward victory in the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries, Mr. Bloomberg was determined to run, according to his advisers, several of whom insisted on anonymity to speak candidly about confidential discussions.
But Mr. Bloomberg balked at the prospect of a race against Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton, who has established a dominant lead over Mr. Sanders on the Democratic side. In his column, Mr. Bloomberg said he could not in good conscience enter a race that could lead to a deadlock in the Electoral College — and to the election of Mr. Trump, or perhaps Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
8 February
Michael Bloomberg says he’s ‘looking at all the options’ around presidential bid
Billionaire tells Financial Times that U.S. voters deserve ‘a lot better’
(CBC) It’s the first time he acknowledged a possible run.
The billionaire businessman’s aides floated the idea last month that the former mayor could fill a gap in the center of the political spectrum.
He is distressed by the rise of Donald Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz among Republicans and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders among Democrats.
He told the Financial Times that the U.S. public deserves “a lot better” and that he finds the level of “discourse and discussion distressingly banal and an outrage and an insult to the voters.”
24 January
(WSJ) Michael Bloomberg Mulling Run for President as Independent
23 January
Former New York mayor eyeing independent run for president
(iPolitics) Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is taking early steps toward launching an independent campaign for president, seeing a potential path to the White House amid the rise of Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders.
Bloomberg has retained advisers and plans to conduct a poll after the Feb. 9 New Hampshire primary to assess the state of the race and judge whether there is an opening for him to mount an independent campaign, according to three people familiar with his thinking. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about his plans, which were first reported Saturday by The New York Times.
Bloomberg has set a March deadline to decide on whether to enter the race, to ensure his access to the ballot in all 50 states.
The billionaire media executive, who served three terms as mayor of New York, is said to be concerned by Trump’s lasting hold on the Republican field and is worried about the impact of Sanders’ campaign on Hillary Clinton’s bid for the Democratic nomination.