Michael Bloomberg Spent Total Of $900M On Failed Presidential Campaign — Almost $16M Per Delegate
Michael Bloomberg spent a total of $900 million on his failed presidential campaign, dishing out nearly $300 million per month and what ended up being a total of $16 million for each of the 58 pledged delegates he had won by the time he dropped out of the race.
The former New York City mayor and billionaire was a late entrant into the race for the Democratic nomination, jumping in late last year and filling the airwaves with advertisements that took aim at Donald Trump as he presented himself as the strongest to take on the incumbent Republican in November. He saw a bump in polling but ultimately failed to turn that into enough voter support, dropping out after Super Tuesday to endorse former Vice President Joe Biden.
As The Hill reported, new filings with the Federal Election Commission show the massive amounts of cash that Bloomberg spent on the campaign, which included a total of $875 million through the end of February along with debts of close to $32 million. As the report noted, the majority of that went into ads taking on Trump.
“The filings show that the Bloomberg campaign spent more than $500 million on television advertising alone, as well as more than $100 million on digital ads,” the report noted. “It also dropped more than $15 million on polling.”
The billionaire media mogul also took sharp aim at Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, throwing a “communist” jab at the self-professed Democratic socialist during a debate earlier this year.
Bloomberg employed an unusual campaign strategy, purposely sitting out the first four contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina to focus on the delegate-rich states voting on Super Tuesday. After rising in the polls and siphoning support from Biden, Bloomberg saw a dip after coming under fire from competitors in a debate. He came out of the contests with just 58 pledged delegates and won just one race — in American Samoa, where a total of 351 people voted.
Bloomberg’s endorsement of Biden was credited with helping the former vice president consolidate support among the party’s more moderate voters, helping Biden to surge ahead of Sanders and take what is now seen as a nearly insurmountable lead in the race for the nomination.
Bloomberg said this week that he would be transferring $18 million to Democratic National Committee and would be consolidating his campaign’s support with the party. The former New York City mayor has also vowed to continue spending money for advertisements over the course of the campaign to attack Trump.
