WASHINGTON — After Democrats attacked Michael Bloomberg for his past support of Republicans during Wednesday’s presidential debate, a Democrat who ran against one of his GOP allies says she feels like he cost her her election just two years ago.

Liuba Grechen Shirley, a New York congressional candidate, ran against longtime Republican Rep. Pete King and nearly unseated him for New York's 2nd District in 2018. Grechen Shirley told BuzzFeed News on Thursday that during the campaign, she called Bloomberg to ask for his support. “He told me that Peter King was a longtime friend and so he would be supporting him,” she said.

Bloomberg had donated the maximum to King’s campaigns in the past; in 2018, he hosted a high-dollar fundraiser for the Republican at his home.

That year, a blue wave upended New York state politics: Democrats flipped the legislature after a long Republican reign, and Staten Island elected its first Democratic member of Congress in nearly a decade. But on Long Island, Grechen Shirley struggled to secure the extra 5% she needed to unseat King — despite coming closer than any other Democrat in nearly three decades.

“That was the closest that anyone had ever come in his 26 years in office — and had we not had Mike Bloomberg fundraising for King on the other side, we very well might have taken that seat,” she said.