We’re less than three months out now from the Iowa caucuses—but apparently the already sprawling 2020 Democratic field may still be growing. Despite announcing in March that he wouldn’t throw his hat in the 2020 ring, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg may be preparing to change his mind. Multiple outlets are reporting that Bloomberg is making moves toward a possible 2020 run, though the billionaire still hasn’t made a final decision about whether or not to enter the race. Democrats need to “ensure that Trump is defeated—but Mike is increasingly concerned that the current field of candidates is not well positioned to do that,” Bloomberg adviser Howard Wolfson told the New York Times, who first reported Bloomberg’s potential run. “If Mike runs he would offer a new choice to Democrats built on a unique record running America’s biggest city, building a business from scratch and taking on some of America’s toughest challenges as a high-impact philanthropist.”
The former mayor is expected to make a decision within days about a potential run, and is currently taking steps to ensure he doesn’t get shut out as filing deadlines for the 2020 primaries approach. Bloomberg plans to officially file his candidacy in Alabama ahead of its deadline on Friday, and is reaching out to prominent Democrats to tell them he’s seriously considering entering the race. Retired Senator Harry Reid told the Times he had received a call from Bloomberg, in which he had implied he would run for president even without explicitly saying so. “[The call] wasn’t just to wish me a good weekend,” Reid said. While Bloomberg has flirted with presidential runs in the past, usually as an independent candidate, this time around is seemingly the closest he’s ever gotten to actually doing it, as the Times notes Bloomberg has never before actually taken the step of filing to put his name on the ballot.
Bloomberg will have to use his deep pockets to quickly play catch-up in the primary race, as he still has yet to build any sort of infrastructure in the early primary states and stands little chance of making the November debate stage, whose qualifying deadline is next week. (The deadline for the December debate is December 12, and requires 200,000 unique donors and earning 4% in at least four polls to qualify.) Moreover, while Bloomberg sees his candidacy as a necessary corrective to what he views as a lagging Democratic field, there’s little sign that Democratic voters necessarily agree. A Fox News poll conducted in late October found that only 6% of respondents would definitely vote for Bloomberg if he got into the race, while 32% said they would never vote for him. The poll also found that 69% of voters are happy with the Democratic field as it currently is, which already has a number of candidates running in Bloomberg’s lanes: There are centrists (Joe Biden, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Sen. Michael Bennet, etc.), a prominent billionaire (Tom Steyer), and plenty of candidates that match the 77-year-old Bloomberg’s age (Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and to a lesser extent, Sen. Elizabeth Warren). Bloomberg’s mayoral background isn’t even a first for the Democratic field, with current New York City mayor Bill de Blasio‘s failed 2020 candidacy already proving that his experience isn’t a surefire ticket to getting Democratic voters on board.
But given his high profile, Bloomberg’s candidacy is sure to shake up the Democratic field nonetheless—likely to the detriment of current frontrunner Biden. The billionaire’s potential run essentially amounts to a vote of no-confidence in Biden’s foundering campaign, as Bloomberg had initially bowed out of the race primarily because he didn’t believe he had an easy path to the nomination with Biden in the 2020 ranks. Bloomberg’s candidacy will go head-to-head against Biden, with the two men both competing for the same big-money establishment, centrist base, and any gains the former mayor is able to make will likely eat into Biden and other centrist candidates’ vote share. As some politicos have already started predicting, Bloomberg’s candidacy will likely be a gift to progressives Warren and Sanders as a result, as Bloomberg serves as yet another candidate to help spread out the centrist and center-left vote. Already, the two senators are using Bloomberg’s possible candidacy to their benefit, pointing to his willingness to enter the race to advance their populist, anti-billionaire messages. “The billionaire class is scared and they should be scared,” Sanders said on Twitter Thursday, while Warren welcomed Bloomberg to the race with a link to her campaign’s calculator showing how much billionaires would pay under her wealth tax. “If you’re looking for policy plans that will make a huge difference for working people and which are very popular, start here,” Warren wrote in her message to Bloomberg. (The candidate’s billionaire calculator, helpfully, even has a “If you’re Michael Bloomberg, click here” button, which informs Bloomberg of his opportunity to invest some of his $52 billion wealth “back into our society so everyone has a chance to succeed.”)