Bloomberg Wants to Show Trump Voters They’re Economically Left Behind

The candidate released a plan to support entrepreneurs and small businesses, dovetailed with millions of dollars of swing-state TV ad spending

Photo: Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images

In 2016, President Trump resonated with parts of the nation that he said were left behind by bad trade deals that sent their high-wage jobs overseas. If a Democrat is to beat him in 2020, large numbers of those voters will have to be convinced that they are still forgotten.

That may seem a steep challenge amid rising real wages, half-century-low joblessness, and a record economic expansion, but former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg — trying to muscle his way into the race — has made the economy a centerpiece of his campaign.

Bloomberg’s strategy has already made him an important wild card in the contest for the Democratic nomination. In an average of national polls published Friday at FiveThirtyEight.com, Bloomberg was in fifth place at 5.2%. But there are indications he may be moving up. A new Hill-HarrisX poll published the same day had Bloomberg rising sharply to double digits, with 11%, a tie with Sen. Elizabeth Warren for third place. Joe Biden retained his lead at 28% and Sen. Bernie Sanders was second with 16%. The results were a six-point gain for Bloomberg from the organization’s last poll two weeks ago.

In an interview yesterday, two of Bloomberg’s campaign advisers said that, while the macroeconomy appears healthy, the gains have gone almost exclusively to coastal and some other urban areas — so-called superstar cities. Many people who live in other swaths of the country and neighborhoods within the superstar cities, even if they are working, are in relatively low-wage jobs.

“If you look across the country, there are big inequalities,” said Mark Whitehouse, an economic adviser to Bloomberg.

At a campaign stop in San Diego today, Bloomberg will unveil part of his economic plan, which is an initiative to beef up assistance to startups and small businesses, including in the still-distressed parts of the country, the campaign told Marker. Special attention would be paid to businesses owned by women, minorities, and veterans, which for years have received a tiny fraction of venture capital money provided through the federal government’s Small Business Administration.

Brian Reich, a campaign spokesperson, said other sections of Bloomberg’s economic proposals will be released later this week.

As of now, Trump is running amid one of the best economic periods in modern American history. It is among the headiest periods for low-income, low-skilled workers, who suffered the most in the financial crash and earlier. Their wages rose just under 4.5% year over year in November, according to Fed data. Unemployment is 3.5%, matching the low in December 1969. As of November, the economy had grown for 125 straight months, the longest stretch since the government began keeping records in the 1850s. All three major U.S. stock indexes closed at record highs last week.

Bloomberg’s argument to voters in swing states will be that these numbers mask important pockets of misery, specifically in the Rust Belt and other regions that were key to Trump’s 2016 electoral college victory.

Raw data backs up what Bloomberg is after. A June report by the Economic Innovation Group tracked 207 counties that supported Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012, then flipped to Trump in 2016. In the first two years of Trump’s presidency, most of the counties continued to lag far behind the rest of the country’s economic expansion, the report said.

Employment increases and startups of new businesses in those counties were at less than half the rate of the rest of the country, according to the report. Some 37% of the counties lost jobs, compared with 22% that added jobs at or above the national rate. More than half the counties lost population. “Flipped counties are slowly losing relative economic significance, as the rest of the economy grows faster around them,” the report said.

These are the areas that Bloomberg is targeting with his message. As of now, the Hill-HarrisX poll found that Bloomberg is challenged in one constituency he is seeking to penetrate — lower-income Americans. He polled at 16% among voters earning $75,000 or more annually, but is at just 8% among those earning less.

Bloomberg has the money to keep pushing his strategy. One of America’s most successful living entrepreneurs, he is a billionaire who is financing his own campaign, buying about $140 million in TV ads that are saturating swing states, relying on data provided by a high-tech company he established last year, according to CNBC.

The strategy mimics what Bloomberg did in last year’s midterms. He spent more than $41 million on 24 House races, and $112 million overall, the New York Times reported. The Democrat won 21 of the races, 12 of which were in toss-up or Republican districts.

“President Trump has turned his back on America’s aspiring entrepreneurs, through cuts to programs, like microloans and Small Business Development Centers, that directly help small businesses,” the Bloomberg campaign said in a news release today. “The effects of this dysfunction and neglect have been disastrous.”