Bloomberg moves to shut down talk he's trying to buy the election
December 6, 2019
Michael Bloomberg forcefully sought to rebut charges from his fellow Democratic presidential candidates that he is attempting to leverage his immense wealth to buy the 2020 election, suggesting the self-financing of his campaign renders him immune from the tugs of special interests.
“I'm not buying any more — I'm doing exactly the same thing they're doing, except that I am using my own money,” he told “ CBS This Morning” in an interview that aired Friday. “They're using somebody else’s money, and those other people expect something from them. Nobody gives you money if they don't expect something, and I don't want to be bought.”
The former New York mayor, who has pledged not to accept donations toward his White House bid, has come under intense criticism from primary competitors for injecting tens of millions of dollars into the nominating contest to blanket television airwaves across the country with historic ad buys.
Among Bloomberg’s most vocal opponents are Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the field’s leading progressives, who argue the billionaire’s wielding of his vast personal fortune and centrist political ideology are out of sync with the modern Democratic Party.
Sanders told reporters in New Hampshire last month that Bloomberg’s late entry into the race demonstrates “the arrogance of billionaires,” and that his levels of campaign spending made him complicit in “undermining” American democracy.
In an interview Wednesday with Bloomberg Television, Warren said she did not believe elections “ought to be for sale,” asserting that Democrats should not “say that the only way you’re going to get elected, the only way you’re going to be our nominee, is either if you are a billionaire or if you’re sucking up to billionaires.”
Bloomberg pushed back against those attacks Friday, citing his working-class background, challenges in the private sector, and history of charitable giving. “I think I could do a lot of good for the country if I could become president, and so using some of those monies to fund the campaign is fine,” he said.
“I worked my way through college, and now I worked for 15 years, I got fired, I started a company, the company turned out to be phenomenally successful ... and I give 100 percent of the money away. What's wrong with all of that?” he later added. “And then I turn and they're criticizing me for it? I don't know — ask them what they're doing. Why didn't they do that? They had a chance to go out and make a lot of money, and how much of their own money do they put into their campaigns?”
Source: https://www.politico.com/
