In his announcement, Michael Bloomberg said he’s launching a new climate change initiative and will invest more in gun control and education efforts as well. | AP Photo/John Locher 2020 elections Bloomberg says he won't run for president in 2020 The billionaire said he was ‘clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination.’

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg announced Tuesday he would not run for president in a crowded Democratic primary where he had little chance, and instead would focus on helping his party win back the White House and Senate by spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

“I am clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination in such a crowded field,” Bloomberg wrote in an op-ed published on his eponymous news organization’s website.


“I’ve come to realize that I’m less interested in talking than doing,” Bloomberg said. “And I have concluded that, for now, the best way for me to help our country is by rolling up my sleeves and continuing to get work done.”

Bloomberg is prepared to spend at least $500 million from his own pocket to deny President Donald Trump a second term, his top political advisor Kevin Sheekey told POLITICO last month, with the intention of running an unprecedented data-heavy campaign designed to operate as a shadow political party for the eventual Democratic nominee.

The effort is already under way, according to Bloomberg advisor Mitch Stewart, who led President Obama’s battleground efforts in 2012. The focus is on registering new voters, persuading already registered voters to support the eventual Democratic nominee and figuring out how to get the Democratic base to the polls.

The nascent campaign is moving into a handful of swing states: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and, Stewart says, “potentially in Arizona and Georgia.”

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Stewart said the crowded Democratic primary — and Trump’s cutting-edge digital outreach effort, which is already humming away on platforms like Facebook — necessitate a Democratic response to stop the GOP.

“They’re already spending enormous resources to build out their resources,” Stewart said.

“Whoever the nominee is likely won’t be decided until late into 2020 and whoever that nominee is will face a very large and well-funded campaign in waiting,“ Stewart continued. “As we looked at the gaps in the current ecosystem, we said, ‘could we set something up right now that could provide the infrastructure, provide the data and technology to whomever the eventually nominee is so they’re not at such a disadvantage once the primary is over?’ We can.”

Bloomberg‘s effort would likely dovetail with youth and nonwhite voter turnout efforts of another Democratic billionaire, Tom Steyer, whose NextGen operation has said it would welcome Bloomberg’s help.

Bloomberg, a former New York mayor who made his fortune providing data services in the financial industry, studied polling and focus group data as he considered running for president. But ultimately, he saw there was no path for him in a Democratic Party that has veered leftward in recent years.

“He’s old. He’s white. He’s a man. He’s a billionaire. He’s of Wall Street,” said a Bloomberg confidante who had discussed various options with the billionaire. “How many strikes against him did he need? Mike Bloomberg wants to make a difference, not a spectacle.”

In addition to his partisan voter-turnout efforts, Bloomberg said he’s launching a new climate change initiative called Beyond Carbon, which builds off the Sierra Club’s successful “Beyond Coal” campaign that he funded to phase out coal-fired power plants. In addition, he said, he’ll be investing more in gun control and education efforts.

Bloomberg spent more than $100 million during the last midterm election and helped elected 23 new House Democrats. He has already built a team of political pros who plan to focus on voter registration and turnout efforts to help Democrats win control in Washington.

“In the weeks and months ahead, I will dive even deeper into the work of turning around our country, through concrete actions and results,” Bloomberg wrote Tuesday. “I hope those who have urged me to run, and to stand up for the values and principles that they hold dear, will understand that my decision was guided by one question: How can I best serve the country?”

