In the wake of Tues­day night’s Iowa cau­cus results deba­cle, one ques­tion has been on every­body’s mind: Is Michael Bloomberg an oligarch?

For his entire career in politics, Michael Bloomberg has backed policies and politicians that protect his fortune.

The query was first raised by Bernie Sanders’ cam­paign co-chair Nina Turn­er, in the course of an inter­view by MSNBC host Chris Matthews. Her descrip­tion of Bloomberg as an oli­garch buy­ing his way into the Demo­c­ra­t­ic debates prompt­ed a spir­it­ed defense of the media mogul from The Root’s polit­i­cal edi­tor Jason John­son. John­son object­ed that ​“Oli­garchy in our par­tic­u­lar ter­mi­nol­o­gy makes you think of a rich per­son who got their mon­ey off of oil in Rus­sia, who is tak­ing advan­tage of a bro­ken and dys­func­tion­al system.”

This is a strange defense. Aside from the men­tion of Rus­sia, a sub­ject known to elic­it unbal­anced respons­es from lib­er­al com­men­ta­tors, the descrip­tion fits Michael Bloomberg pret­ty well. He is indeed very rich, and it can scarce­ly be denied that he is tak­ing advan­tage of a bro­ken and dys­func­tion­al polit­i­cal sys­tem. John­son implic­it­ly acknowl­edged the lat­ter, effec­tive­ly argu­ing ​“hate the game, not the play­er.” But the prob­lem with this argu­ment is that Michael Bloomberg has long been fight­ing to pre­serve the rules of the game that have made him so obscene­ly wealthy. He’s been act­ing, in oth­er words, like an oligarch.

Mak­ing Bloomberg

Bloomberg is famous for being some­thing of a polit­i­cal chameleon. He was a Demo­c­rat for most of his life, became a Repub­li­can to run for may­or of New York in 2001, became an inde­pen­dent in 2007, and then became a Demo­c­rat again in 2018, appar­ent­ly in response to Pres­i­dent Trump. But through­out all of these changes, one thing has remained con­sis­tent: his devo­tion to the inter­ests of the wealthy.

Bloomberg came into office in 2002 promis­ing to run New York City like a busi­ness, and he deliv­ered. He imme­di­ate­ly offered city unions con­tracts with pay rais­es, but demand­ed con­ces­sions on pen­sions and health­care, just as pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies have been demand­ing from unions for decades. At the next round of con­tract nego­ti­a­tions, when the costs of these con­ces­sions became clear to teach­ers’ union mem­bers and they demand­ed more, Bloomberg sim­ply refused to bar­gain with them.

He also got rid of pesky demo­c­ra­t­ic imped­i­ments to enact­ing his neolib­er­al agen­da. He placed city schools under may­oral con­trol, elim­i­nat­ing local school boards and imple­ment­ing pol­i­cy instead through the Pan­el on Edu­ca­tion Pol­i­cy, whose mem­bers he appoint­ed. At the same time, Bloomberg’s admin­is­tra­tion expand­ed char­ter schools in the city, fur­ther putting edu­ca­tion under pri­vate con­trol. Like a good busi­ness­man, he accom­pa­nied this pri­va­ti­za­tion blitz with a pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign, expand­ing the Depart­ment of Education’s PR staff from 4 to 23.

Through­out his admin­is­tra­tion, Bloomberg was also a vocal defend­er of the inter­ests of the rich. In clas­sic trick­le-down fash­ion, he argued that help­ing the poor was best accom­plished by help­ing the rich. Want to address pover­ty? ​“Attract more very for­tu­nate peo­ple. They’re the ones who pay the bills,” he said in 2013. When the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis hit, Bloomberg ran inter­fer­ence for the banks, repeat­ing right-wing lies that blamed fair hous­ing laws for the mort­gage melt­down. When Occu­py Wall Street put inequal­i­ty into the nation­al spot­light, Bloomberg dis­missed the protests, argu­ing that the coun­try had been ​“over­spend­ing” and social ser­vices should be cut. And though he’s singing a dif­fer­ent tune now, in 2012 he was a dogged oppo­nent of rais­ing the min­i­mum wage.

It would be bad enough if Bloomberg were just a New York prob­lem. How­ev­er, because of his vast wealth, Bloomberg has secured a role as a play­er on the nation­al stage, back­ing politi­cians and caus­es that pro­tect the wealth of the bil­lion­aire class. He sup­port­ed George W. Bush for reelec­tion in 2004, after Bush passed mas­sive tax cuts for the rich. He donat­ed mon­ey to the late Sen. John McCain (R‑Ariz.) and backed a host of ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians, rang­ing from reli­gious zealot Sen. Orrin Hatch (R‑UT) to racist loud­mouth Rep. Peter King (R‑NY). Though he donat­ed to Democ­rats as well, up until the 2018 midterms, Bloomberg’s super PAC Inde­pen­dence USA spent more mon­ey fund­ing the cam­paigns of Repub­li­cans than Democrats.

Oli­garchy in action

Now, Bloomberg is run­ning for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion for pres­i­dent. As with the rest of his polit­i­cal career, he’s run­ning entire­ly on the sup­port of his per­son­al wealth. So far, he’s spent more than $300 mil­lion of his per­son­al for­tune on his cam­paign. And fol­low­ing the Iowa cau­cus deba­cle, Bloomberg announced he would be dou­bling his ad spending.

What’s more, Bloomberg has been able to use his obscene wealth to shift the insti­tu­tion­al field to his favor. He has picked up a num­ber of endorse­ments from promi­nent may­ors in whose cities he spent phil­an­thropic mon­ey, such as Michael Tubbs of Stock­ton, Cal­i­for­nia and Greg Fis­ch­er of Louisville, Ken­tucky. Oth­er endorse­ments have come through may­ors who received train­ing in Bloomberg’s Har­vard City Lead­er­ship Initiative.

Even more out­ra­geous­ly, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee recent­ly elim­i­nat­ed the donor num­ber require­ment from the Neva­da debate, allow­ing Bloomberg on the stage even as oth­er can­di­dates were elim­i­nat­ed by the DNC’s strict debate rules. Bloomberg’s mon­ey just doesn’t buy him a cam­paign — it buys his cam­paign the abil­i­ty to change the rules.

Michael Bloomberg is, there­fore, a per­fect exam­ple of a ​“rich person…taking advan­tage of a bro­ken and dys­func­tion­al polit­i­cal sys­tem.” It’s worth remem­ber­ing that in oth­er coun­tries, Bloomberg wouldn’t be able to throw his wealth around like this. In Cana­da, for exam­ple, can­di­dates and par­ties are bound to max­i­mum spend­ing lim­its, scaled to the pop­u­la­tion of the elec­toral dis­trict in which they’re com­pet­ing. Not so in the Unit­ed States, and Bloomberg has tak­en full advantage.

For his entire career in pol­i­tics, Michael Bloomberg has backed poli­cies and politi­cians that pro­tect his for­tune. In doing so, he has act­ed exact­ly as an oli­garch does. The term ​“oli­garch” dates back to ancient Greece. There, Aris­to­tle used it to describe a gov­ern­ment which the rich con­trol in their own inter­ests. This has been Bloomberg’s approach to gov­ern­ment through­out his career. It’s the game he plays, and any­one who wants to change it will learn very quick­ly that he is not on their team.

The views expressed are the authors’ own. As a 501©3 non­prof­it, In These Times does not sup­port or oppose can­di­dates for polit­i­cal office.