WASHINGTON – Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg, who was endorsed last week by Wayne County Executive Warren Evans, hired Evans' wife to work on his Michigan campaign before that time, the Free Press confirmed Wednesday.

WXYZ-TV 7 Action News first reported that Renata Evans had been working for at least the last month as a field organizer for the Bloomberg campaign in Michigan. Warren Evans endorsed Bloomberg at an event last Thursday in Detroit.

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Both Bloomberg's campaign and Evans' office indicated to the Free Press on Wednesday that his wife's job with Bloomberg had nothing to do with the endorsement.

Renata Evans began as a volunteer with the campaign in late December, being hired shortly thereafter. The county executive, meanwhile, waited weeks and had multiple discussions with the campaign before agreeing to endorse Bloomberg.

Evans' spokesman, Jim Martinez, told the Free Press on Wednesday that the county executive supports Bloomberg "because Mike is the only Democratic candidate who has expressly acknowledged the generational wealth gap for communities of color and has a bold plan to close that gap and lift up all Americans."

“Any implication that we hired Renata for any reason other than her skill and expertise is completely fiction and an insult to the hard work and dedication she shows every day engaging with voters on behalf of our campaign,” added Charly Norton, a spokeswoman for the Bloomberg campaign in Michigan.

In recent months, Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman and former mayor of New York City, has been spending heavily in Michigan on TV ads, organizing and hiring staff, and also gaining key endorsements from figures such as U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Rochester Hills, and former gubernatorial nominee and congressman Mark Schauer.

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Bloomberg has lined up several well-known Democratic political operatives in Michigan, including Jill Alper and Jamaine Dickens among them, and has been the subject of reports saying he is paying entry-level field organizers as much as $72,000 a year, twice as much as some other campaigns.

After bypassing the early states, Bloomberg, who has invested heavily in several Super Tuesday states that are voting March 3, has also said he plans to stay in Michigan, which votes March 10, and other states where he is organizing even if he doesn't win the nomination. He has he wants to help defeat President Donald Trump in November.

Evans and his wife, who was director of outreach and community relations for the Wayne County Treasurer's Office, married in 2017. She later resigned her position after a TV report questioned her hiring by the treasurer's office at a time she was dating Evans, who was already county executive, saying she wanted to avoid any appearance of impropriety.

Contact Todd Spangler:tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler. Read more onMichigan politics and sign up for ourelections newsletter.