Actor Michael Douglas, former mayor of Gary, Indiana, woo Wisconsin voters for Bloomberg

MADISON - Actor Michael Douglas played a Wisconsin governor turned president in the movie “The American President,” but on Saturday he played a supporter for Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg.

Douglas was in Madison for the opening of the campaign's second office in the state. He also has been featured in radio commercials voicing his support for the former Republican mayor of New York City.

“He has done more as a private citizen and as mayor than most congressmen or senators,” Douglas said. “This is a rare moment. I haven’t felt like this since John Kennedy.”

Douglas came to Wisconsin a day after burying his father, actor Kirk Douglas, who died Wednesday at age 103.

Douglas thanked supporters for their condolences and prayers to his family and said he and his father talked often about sports and politics.

When Bloomberg announced he was running for president, Douglas said his father was excited about his prospects.

“I don’t know if he was pulling my leg or not, but one of the last words he said in the hospital … he asked me to lean close to him,” Douglas said. “And I leaned close to him and he looked at me and said, ‘Mike can get it done.’”

Douglas was one half of a two-part push by the Bloomberg campaign to woo Wisconsin voters Saturday.

She's no Hollywood celebrity, but former Gary, Indiana, Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson, drew about 100 people to America's Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee where she touted Bloomberg's plan to address the gaping wealth gap between black and white Americans.

Bloomberg himself, via television, outlined the key points of his Greenwood Initiative, named for the destruction of a successful black business district — known as "Black Wall Street" — by white mobs in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921.

He enumerated the nation's history of race-based economic injustices, from slavery to Jim Crow and redlining. Today, he said, black Americans have one-tenth of the wealth of fellow white citizens. As president, he said, he would attempt to close that gap by creating 100,000 new black-owned businesses, investing $70 billion in disadvantaged neighborhoods and helping 1 million more African Americans become homeowners.

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Freeman-Wilson said Bloomberg is the only candidate to explicitly address the concerns of black Americans and the "historical injustices that have impacted our community."

In addition, she said, he has a track record of investing in communities across the country and supporting initiatives aimed at curbing gun violence, addressing climate change and supporting young men of color.

"He understood that the only way you can remove economic and racial disparities is to make a meaningful investment," said Freeman-Wilson, a former judge and Indiana attorney general who served as Gary's mayor from 2012 to 2020.

"It's not why do I support MIke Bloomberg," she said. "Why in the world would I not?"

Both Freeman-Wilson and Douglas addressed some of Bloomberg's history that could be problematic for their respective audiences: New York's stop-and-frisk policy, since discontinued, that disproportionately targeted young men of color and the fact that he ran previously as a Republican.

"He made a huge mistake with stop and frisk," Freeman-Wilson said. "But here's what he did. He acknowledged that mistake. And he went about the business of correcting it, by investing in alternatives to incarceration, by investing in education, by creating opportunities for young African-American males."

Douglas acknowledged that Bloomberg registered previously as a Republican "when the Republican Party stood for something, different than it does now." Today, he assured the crowd the candidate is "a stone-cold Democrat."

The two also took veiled jabs at President Donald Trump.

"We need a president who is willing to listen to dissenting opinions — as we sit here a day after people have been fired for telling the truth," Freeman-Wilson said.

Douglas commended Bloomberg for separating himself from his private business.

"He could have no involvement with his company at all, compared to some other people," Douglas said. "And his company multiplied by four times in value (while he was in office) so he's doing something right."

Trump Victory spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement:

"Despite Michael Bloomberg's desperate efforts to buy relevancy in this election, he can’t hide from the socialist policies that made him a failed mayor. His efforts to control every aspect of our lives, from anti-Second Amendment policies to regulating the size of sodas, are straight out of a socialist, big-government playbook and will be soundly rejected by Wisconsin voters."

'Race is wide open'

Bloomberg served as mayor of New York from 2002 to 2013. In 2016, Bloomberg supported Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and called Trump a “con man” during the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

Trump went on to win the election and Bloomberg hopes to take him on in November. But first, he must win the nomination.

Jorna Taylor, Wisconsin state director for the Bloomberg campaign, said they hope to build momentum for Bloomberg across the state and plan to open offices in La Crosse and Appleton.

“We are going to field a statewide campaign to beat Donald Trump from day one landing in this state,” Taylor said.

The debacle with the Iowa caucus, Taylor said, shows there is room in the primary for Bloomberg.

“Folks are still making up their minds in this race and I think that’s really been demonstrated from the results coming out of Iowa,” Taylor said. “This race is wide open and that’s why the Bloomberg candidacy is so critical. … We’re looking forward to seeing how this plays out over the next few months.”

Although the Bloomberg campaign has been doing a lot of work ahead of the Wisconsin primary on April 7, Taylor does not think it's Wisconsin or bust for the campaign.

“We know that Wisconsin is a critical state,” Taylor said, adding the Democratic National Convention is being hosted in Milwaukee in July. “We are committed to being here through November whether Bloomberg is the nominee or not.”

'Don't take a knife to a gunfight'

Both events drew supporters, as well as those who are undecided but wanted to hear what the candidate had to say.

"I wanted to hear about his initiative and see what he could bring to this wealth gap we have in Wisconsin and the nation," said Antoine Gosa of Racine, who brought his teenage daughter along to the Milwaukee event.

David Meister of Fox Point, who sported a Bloomberg sticker on his jacket, said he volunteered for the campaign the first day his candidacy was announced. "I used to travel to New York once a month on business and I saw that he transformed the city," he said.

Bloomberg's Madison office was packed with Democratic and Bloomberg supporters much to the pleasure of campaign staffers.

Jeff Lennberg and his wife, Gretchen Schultz-Lennberg, of Cottage Grove, came to the Madison event with open minds.

While they plan to support whoever wins the Democratic nomination come November, Lennberg said he is still undecided in the primary.

“I like Mike Bloomberg’s more moderate approach,” Lennberg said. “You’re going to get a lot more done. The extreme left, the extreme right, they can’t come together in any way whatsoever."

He knows how to get to certain people who are more moderate in the Senate in the House of Representatives and work together.”

Jeanne Wright, of Mount Horeb in Dane County, also came to learn more about Bloomberg and seemed to like what she heard.

“You don’t take a knife to a gunfight,” Wright said of the Bloomberg candidacy. “I think the guy is coming with some chops and he can do the job.”

Wright, a Democratic-socialist, has supported U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. But she thinks Democrats need to get behind the nominee whoever it is.

“When push comes to shove, I think the one thing we’re all unified on is we think that the current president dishonors the office and we want to see change,” Wright said. “We’re willing to swallow personal preferences to ... get behind somebody to restore the values of this country.”