No candidate has ever spent that sort of money on his own political ambitions. The Democratic Party faithful, given to shrieking like caged baboons when sighting such large sums of money in politics, have been oddly placid about Bloomberg’s investments. Speaking in New Hampshire recently, democratic socialist Bernie Sanders commented that there’s “something wrong” with Bloomberg spending so much money, but tempered his furor by comparing it to the number of billionaire donors the relative pauper Pete Buttigieg has lined up. Perhaps Democrats have made peace with Bloomberg’s money because he’s vowed to keep spending even if he isn’t the nominee. Whatever the party’s rationalization, we shouldn’t avert our eyes from the flood of Bloomberg money sloshing through the veins of the Democratic beast. He might not own the party, but he surely qualifies as a renter.

If campaign donations are chits that can be called in at a later date, Bloomberg holds a strategic stockpile of them. In 2018, he spent $112 million on turning the House of Representatives blue as Bloomberg PACs prevailed in 21 of the 24 House races they funded. Over the past eight years, Bloomberg has dropped more than $38 million on political campaigns in California, including soda-tax initiatives, pro-charter school political organizations, anti-tobacco propositions, and more. A Bloomberg spending binge recently washed through Virginia, helping to turn its Legislature blue ($2.5 million), win the governorship for the party ($1.26 million) and the attorney generalship ($700,000). In 2019, he gave $800,000 to bolster the Virginia Democratic Party’s infrastructure and voter-data needs. He recently promised $5 million to Stacey Abrams’ national voting rights group, which is on top of the $500,000 he donated to her losing campaign for Georgia governor in 2018. Bloombergbucks have showered down on the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the National LGBTQ Task Force, the Democratic Governors Association, the Nevada State Democratic Party and others.

These political chits are dwarfed by the philanthropic ones Bloomberg has earned via his charitable donations to Democratic-adjacent causes and places. A 60 Minutes report from 2017 estimated that Bloomberg charities have given about $5 billion to “causes that often dovetail with his political interests,” like gun control, the environment, public health and anti-tobacco. Here’s just a sample of his philanthropy: $70 million to 25 American cities to reduce carbon emissions; a $50 million donation to support access to contraception; $200 million to push his pet issues to cities; $32 million to a Boston science education center; $5 million to Baltimore for surveillance cameras; and $32 million to the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, a place where mayors and others are indoctrinated in the Bloomberg way of governance. Last year, his foundation vowed a $500 million climate-change campaign, pushing his total climate-change commitment past the $1 billion mark.

Can you locate a significant Democratic Party constituency that has not become beholden to Bloomberg’s money? We’re all comfortable applying the “corrupt” label to politicians who extort money from their supporters. But what to call politicians who reverse money’s unseemly path to give money to their supporters? As Fred Siegal wrote in Commentary in 2011, Bloomberg blazed this trail as New York’s mayor, channeling his philanthropy to “hundreds of the city’s arts and social-service groups with the reasonable expectation that the gratitude these groups felt to their patron would extend to their patron’s political causes.” Bloomberg’s money didn’t necessarily need to buy support to be considered a success. Silence from some squeaky wheels justified the spreading of the grease. Doug Muzzio, a professor of public affairs at Baruch College, later compared Bloomberg’s tactics to the paying of “protection money.”

Bloomberg’s campaign donations to other candidates have started to pay dividends. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who received $2.5 million in support from Bloomberg when he sought the California governorship in 2018, recently repaid the favor with an endorsement of Bloomberg’s candidacy. Rep. Mikie Sherrill( D-N.J.), who benefited from more than $2.2 million in spending by a Bloomberg PAC in 2018, recently endorsed Bloomberg after Cory Booker dropped out. Sherrill calls Bloomberg “a true public servant.” He calls her a “true patriot.”

It wouldn’t be fair to accuse Bloomberg of attempting to buy the presidency with his money. To begin with, it’s nearly impossible for big money to pave a direct path to the White House. As a devotee of data, Bloomberg knows that. But nobody has ever said money can’t buy influence—encourage people to support things they wouldn’t ordinarily support and keep silent when they would ordinarily speak. Even Bloomberg would admit that he intends for his money to move the party away from its radical wing and back to the more centrist positions that he, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg hold.

If you want to be generous about Bloomberg’s motives, you could say he has neutralized the right-wing and libertarian money pouring into politics; you could praise his high-profile, TV ad campaign for engaging more people in the democratic process; you could compliment him for helping to rebuild the Democratic Party’s infrastructure and restoring its neglected center. If you believe in gun control and climate-change legislation, you’re probably fine with Bloomberg’s influence-buying.

But those rationalizations fall short. “I’m spending all my money to get rid of Trump,” Bloomberg told Reuters last month, seeking to make a virtue out of his bottomless moneybagging. But Bloombergism fails the democratic test because it depends too heavily on the political will and fortune of one man who needn’t seek anybody’s counsel but his own.

The Bloomberg camp defends Mike’s heavy spending on politics as a plus, saying it makes him “wholly independent of special interests.” He’s too rich to be bought, they say. But this formulation ignores the fact that with Bloomberg doing all the buying, he’s very close to becoming the special interest of which he’s warned us.

Politics works best when obligations run in both directions, not just one, when support is earned, not purchased, when the most important political arguments are resolved with words, not money, when the consent of the governed is freely given. The most corrupting thing about Bloomberg’s generosity is that it encourages politicians to do his will and join his dole. Having once achieved that status, it’s only natural that politicians would do whatever it takes to keep it.

Even if a Bloomberg regency based on his billions were temporarily a good thing, what would come after? As we saw in New York, when the checks stopped at the end of his mayoralty, so did Bloombergism. When Bloomberg dies (he turns 78 this week) and his checks stop flowing, what will become of his movement, his coalition and his supplicants? If he were president, what would become of his government? There’s an ugly name for the kind of political system Mike Bloomberg’s money wants to erect: It’s autocracy.

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Last June, a Bloomberg philanthropy donated $500,000 to a Stockton education reform group. In December, Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, who has also attended the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, endorsed Bloomberg for president. Previously, this column considered Bloomberg’s surveillance extremism and his flagrant flip-floppery. Send topics for future Bloomberg columns via email to [email protected]. My email alerts have never gotten a dime from Bloomberg’s pocketbook but it may have caged a meal or two. My Twitter feed hopes to attend the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative next year. My deceased RSS feed loved drinking sugary Big Gulps.