Then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (C) and former New York Stock Exchange President William Johnston (R) listen to New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso (R) on the bell podium before Bloomberg rang the opening bell to begin trading 02 January, 2002. AFP PHOTO Henny Ray ABRAMS

Can a leopard change its spots? That is the central question hanging over Michael Bloomberg’s candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. He has spent nearly a half billion dollars of his personal fortune on a massive advertising campaign and raft of policy proposals designed to show he is a man of the people.

Unfortunately for his campaign, when voters got their first chance to see him live at last week’s presidential debate, he did not perform well. He failed to adequately explain or atone for a litany of past statements and positions cited by opponents that suggest he is a rich elitist with troubling views toward women and minorities. He will get another chance at tonight’s debate, but credibly distancing himself from his past record will present a formidable, if not insurmountable, challenge.

Take his positions on Wall Street, where he made his fortune selling market data and news to big banks and securities firms. Channeling U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, he says he wants a financial system that “works for every American” — a sentiment lifted straight out of her campaign literature.

To prove it, he proposes hiking taxes on wealthy investors, imposing a levy on financial transactions, and toughening financial regulations. It is a fine list. The problem: It is the polar opposite of his past positions.

MIA on banking reform — or taking the side of industry

For instance, he promises to toughen bank capital rules so that big banks do not collapse under the weight of their own debt obligations, as they did during the 2008 financial crisis. Yet, prior to the crisis, he pushed for weakening bank capital rules through adoption of the so-called “Basel II” accords. Basel II would have released hundreds of billions of equity capital from the U.S. banking system, giving particular relief to banks with large portfolios of mortgages and mortgage-backed securities.

View photos Democratic presidential hopefuls Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg (L), Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (C) and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (R) participate in the ninth Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign season co-hosted by NBC News, MSNBC, Noticias Telemundo and The Nevada Independent at the Paris Theater in Las Vegas, Nevada, on February 19, 2020. (Photo by Mark RALSTON / AFP) More

I should know. The agency I then chaired, the FDIC, was leading the effort to resist Basel II implementation. To be fair, Bloomberg’s views were very much in the mainstream during that deregulatory era. The FDIC was mostly alone in the fight. However, even after the crisis, when there was widespread vindication of the FDIC position, Mr. Bloomberg did not actively join the broad consensus in favor of stronger capital rules.

Indeed, throughout the post-crisis battles on financial reform, Mr. Bloomberg was largely absent or taking the side of industry. Now, he decries the financial deregulation that has occurred under the Trump Administration and says he wants to restore the vitality of Obama-era rules. His new-found support for financial stability is welcome, yet Trump appointees have been eroding financial reforms since 2017. Where has he been?

Deregulatory efforts have been particularly savage toward the Volcker Rule, a central feature of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law that restricts banking organizations from engaging in risky speculation. Mr. Bloomberg says he wants to strengthen the Volcker Rule by correcting its “flaws.” But those flaws stem from the numerous exceptions big bank lobbyists secured from Congress during the Dodd-Frank debate where, again, Mr. Bloomberg was MIA. Far from supporting Dodd-Frank, he later called the law “stupid,” even suggesting that Congress should have given the financial industry a bigger hand in writing it!

The most troubling statements from Bloomberg’s past

Perhaps most troubling are Mr. Bloomberg’s past statements on racial discrimination in banking. His campaign says he wants to strengthen consumer protections and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a law enacted in the 1970s that imposes affirmative obligations on banks to lend to low and middle income communities. The CRA was designed to counter the then-pervasive practice of redlining, where banks would refuse to lend in minority neighborhoods. In a 2008 forum hosted by Georgetown University, Bloomberg related the causes of the financial crisis to the end of redlining.