Three Entitled Multi-Billionaires Think They Can Buy The Presidency

Trump may or may not be a billionaire. He claims he is and he certainly will be after he leaves office. But no one knows for sure because he hides his assets and transactions, most of which are unethical-- at best-- and criminal for the most part. But we’ll count him as a billionaire for the sake of this post. He certainly loudly and insistently claims he is. The other two are a Democrat, Tom Steyer, and a whatever serves his shifting interests, Michael Bloomberg, currently pretending-- laughably-- to be a Democrat. All three seem to believe they can buy elections. Bloomberg, and to a lesser extent Trump, have done so in the past.

On Christmas Day, Politico’s Maya King, looked at Bloomberg’s and Steyer’s obscene spending so far. They’ve poured around $200 million into broadcast and digital advertising so far-- and Bloomberg’s camp say he hasn’t even begun yet. The two of them have spent more than all the other candidates for 2019-- combined. Bloomberg’s and Steyer’s name recognition isn’t as high as the front-runners but Bloomberg is getting his name out there in. big way. He isn’t well-liked though. As Democrats get to know him better, they don’t like him at all. Only Tulsi has lower favorability ratings among Democratic primary voters at this point.

“We’ve never seen spending like this in a presidential race,” said Jim McLaughlin, a Republican political strategist who worked as a consultant for Bloomberg’s mayoral bids in New York. “He has a limitless budget.”

The question isn’t whether anyone else will come close to matching Bloomberg or Steyer’s ad spending. Rather, it’s whether all that spending is making any difference.

At present, the two remain mired in single digits in the polls. Steyer isn’t spending at the same stratospheric levels as Bloomberg, yet with $83 million in ad buys so far, he’s still far outpacing everyone other than his fellow billionaire. The next highest spender on ads is Pete Buttigieg at $19 million.

Unlike Bloomberg, who is attempting to jumpstart his campaign on Super Tuesday March 3, Steyer is largely focused on the four early voting states. He has spent nearly $37 million in Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada and New Hampshire-- much of it on digital ads. Since joining the race in July, he’s more than doubled the combined ad spending of Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the early states.

In South Carolina, Steyer has plowed extensive resources into television spots and a flurry of mail while building up a sizable ground game. His 60-person team in South Carolina is the largest of his four state operations. He’s beginning to see some results: according to the most recent Quinnipiac poll, Steyer is now in 5th place there with 5%, one percentage point behind Buttigieg.

Just as important, he’s polling at 4% with black voters, who make up more than half the Democratic electorate in South Carolina. That places him slightly ahead of Sen. Cory Booker, who‘s made the state a focus, and Buttigieg.

“For someone who’s come in as late as he did in the game, he’s doing impressively well in that regard,” said Kate Franch, chair of the Greenville Democratic Party in South Carolina. “And that’s relative to everyone who’s not Joe Biden.”

Bloomberg is spending in all 50 states but is targeting the big, delegate-rich Super Tuesday states that can make or break his campaign. He’s spent more than $13 million on advertising in California, which offers 416 delegates, the single biggest haul in the primary. He’s also spent more than $13 million each in Texas, another Super Tuesday mainstay, and Florida, which votes one week after Super Tuesday and offers 219 delegates.

Bloomberg is also swamping smaller markets like Wilmington, N.C., where his ads have run up to 36 times each day, according to data from Advertising Analytics.

Bloomberg has also shelled out an additional $13 million in Florida, which votes one week after Super Tuesday and offers 219 delegates.

“We’re running out of ways to describe [the ad expenditures] at this point,” said Nick Stapleton, vice president of analytics at Ad Analytics, a television ad tracking firm. “It’s pretty difficult to make a comparison...You’re looking at one-third of Obama’s 2012 total [ad] spend through the general [election] in one month.”

Bloomberg is beginning to see incremental growth in national polls after his saturation-level spending. Since entering the race in mid-November, Bloomberg’s polling numbers have slowly climbed: in Monday’s Quinnipiac University national poll, he had his best showing yet, polling in fifth place at 7%.

Doug Wilson, a North Carolina-based political strategist, said he sees the former New York mayor’s advertisements “at least three times a day.”

“You still have to get a sizable portion of the African-American vote to be able to be competitive but with him running ads as he has it has increased his numbers nationally,” Wilson said, referencing his growing standing in the polls.

Christian Heiens, a political marketer with Saber Communications, a right-leaning media buying agency, said he isn’t convinced Bloomberg and Steyer can continue to rise through their spending. He compared their bids to Jeb Bush, the former Florida GOP governor who in 2016 spent close to $55 million on advertisements in early primary states but underperformed before finishing fourth in South Carolina and quitting the race altogether.

“After you see the same TV ad 10 times, it’s not going to have as big an impact,” Heiens continued. “And that’s not just in politics, that’s in anything in marketing.”

The rest of the Democratic field has also been critical of the billionaires’ spending, though for different reasons. Warren has accused Bloomberg and Steyer of trying to buy their paths to the nomination, while Biden and Andrew Yang have argued that the ad blitzes are more a waste of money than smart politics.

They’re not the only skeptics of how much Bloomberg and Steyer can accomplish with their saturation-level spending.

“I don’t sell anybody short, but rich white billionaires don’t have any real appeal to black voters in the South,” said Brad Coker, a pollster with Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy. “Billionaires have never really done well with Southern voters.”

Except Trump, who won every single southern state against Hillary in 2016-- although almost entirely with white southerners.

In 2016, Hillary spent $563,756,928 and outside allies spent another $206,122,160 on her campaign. Trump spent $333,127,164 and allies spent another $118,217,367 for him. (The value of assistance for Trump from illegal foreign sources, primarily Russia, the Saudis and Israel, is not included in these figures.) Bloomberg, whose net worth is around $65 billion, is the wealthiest presidential candidate in history. He’s 33 times richer than Steyer and at least 14 times richer than Trump, maybe a great deal more than that.

There is no official FEC filing for Bloomberg yet, but the latest filings showed that Steyer had raised $49,645,130.22, of which $47,597,697.36 was self-funded. Of the non-billionaires, Bernie has raised the most-- $74,399,588.43-- although some of the other candidates are also financial contenders:

• Elizabeth- $60,339,946.81
• Mayo Pete- $51,549,046.28
• Status Quo Joe- $37,785,293.38

Biden and Mayo are being largely funded by billionaires and SuperPACs. If you'd like to contribute to Bernie's 100% grassroots campaign with no billionaires, no special interests looking for favors, and no SuperPACs, you can do so by clicking on the DownWithTyranny ActBlue thermometer above. Elections shouldn't be for sale to the wealthiest crooks, not in this country. Trump has certainly proven without doubt that the old line about not being able to buy very rich self-funders is absurd and utterly false. Trump may be the wealthiest person to ever occupy the White House and he also the most self-serving and dishonest.