The operative for a former Democratic presidential candidate was heading into media hibernation. She would not be jumping on board with one of the remaining contenders. But she laughed bitterly remembering how hard her ex-boss had worked to scrape together campaign money, and at what is being now offered to her unemployed colleagues. “Bloomberg is paying organizers $70 or $80K,” she said. “Obviously he has more money than God. But that’s unbelievable.”

It is both unbelievable, compared to the salaries traditionally paid to campaign workers, and totally true. Mike Bloomberg’s gusher of spending on TV and digital ads—he blew past $100 million roughly three weeks after announcing he was running—has, deservedly, gotten tremendous attention. At the same time, though, Bloomberg is pouring many more millions into frantically assembling a field operation. The deal promises organizers $6,000 a month, roughly double the going rate that other Democratic candidates are paying.

The head of Bloomberg’s state campaign operation claims the big money is not just about attracting talent to a late-starting, long shot bid. It’s about fairness. “Most campaigns end up paying their folks an effective rate of $9, $10, $11, $12 an hour,” says Dan Kanninen, a veteran of Barack Obama’s two presidential runs and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 effort. “But companies generally pay interns $15 an hour. We’re asking employees to take on far more responsibility and certainly more hours and pressure than a typical internship, so an annualized rate of $72,000, which works out to $6,000 a month, was really very appropriate, not extravagant.” The salaries are also a political statement: Other Bloomberg aides suggest that their Democratic rivals are hypocrites for advocating a living wage while paying campaign employees less—which is pretty ironic: In 2012, as mayor of New York City, Bloomberg vetoed a living wage bill that would have raised pay for some jobs to $11.50 an hour.

Bloomberg is skipping the four early voting states to push all his chips onto the 15 states that vote on March 3, Super Tuesday, and that determine 34% of the delegates. Bloomberg traveled to one of those states on Sunday, for the official opening of his North Carolina campaign headquarters. With 24 staffers, North Carolina is the largest Bloomberg operation so far, but he’s hired reps in 21 other states as well. Kanninen says the goal is “hundreds” of paid staffers knocking on doors and staging community events, which could give the campaign at least the veneer of a grassroots presence. Bloomberg is already at 5% in national polls, ahead of candidates who have been campaigning all year. “What I’ve heard is that they’re not necessarily running with a plan to win the nomination,” one national Democratic strategist says, “but with a plan to get delegates and to make sure this thing doesn’t go to a crazy place in convention city.”

The money is certainly a nice lure, but the more intriguing part of the Bloomberg campaign’s employment pitch is that the field-organizing jobs will go through November, even if he loses this spring. Bloomberg is pledging to deploy a field operation on behalf of whoever becomes the Democratic nominee. Just what that apparatus would look like is still to be determined. It’s hard to believe Bloomberg would spend as much backing someone else as he would on himself at the top of the ticket. Yet coupled with the $10 million Bloomberg has pledged to back vulnerable House Democrats running for reelection, and the up to $20 million he says he’ll spend on a voter-registration drive targeting five battleground states, the Bloomberg field operation now being cobbled together could prove a potent weapon in a tight general election race.