22 new york | march 2–15, 2020
The owner begins evangelizing about plant-based nutrition and
opening a location in New York City. Then Bloomberg just starts to
talk. “I was up in Maine and Vermont recently—look at the foliage
and that kind of thing,” he says. “They have a diner we go to. The
food was really good. I said, ‘We should have those diners in New
York.’ We’ve had a lot of diners close. It’s partially tastes have
changed, but we’ve had four restaurants in my neighborhood close
in the past six months. Each one was in a townhouse. They’re rip-
ping them down and putting up these thin slivers of buildings.
There’s one two doors away from me. I had the developer and his
wife over for dinner. He said they’re getting $3,000 a square foot
for 4,000 square feet—one floor, 12 million bucks! He took the top
floor for himself, and he thinks he’s going to move in.”
“Nobody could pay that rent,” somebody pipes up.
“Uh,” says Bloomberg, pausing, only a little self-consciously.
“Y’know ...” Then he motors on. “And the Upper East Side has
become less fashionable, supposedly.”
This kind of monologue—weird, unguarded, almost like it was
scripted to illustrate out-of-touchness—is exactly what every politi-
cal strategist in America pointed to when Bloomberg considered
running for president in 2008, and then again in 2012, and then
again in 2016. That guy could never win in America, they said—not
the pasha of the Upper East Side, as important in his way to the city
as the Astors and as foreign to actual voters. But Bloomberg has
loomed as a David Koch–like figure in the Democratic Party in
recent years, spending $65 million on the 2016 election and over
$112 million on the midterms two years later—meaning he is now
not just one of two or three or four serious Democratic candidates
for president (depending on how you count) but also, in recent
history, the party’s most important benefactor and donor.
In 2019, he gave $3.3 billion away, more than Trump’s entire esti-
mated net worth of $3.1 billion—and the largesse has apparently
made everyone very happy to see him at almost all times, which may
have given Bloomberg the idea that a presidential campaign could
feature more of the same. Yet those who know him best have often
thought it wouldn’t be easy. “Mike is not going to arrive as JFK rein-
carnated,” says Tom Brokaw, an old friend. “That’s not who he is. He’s
a different cat altogether.” Joanna Coles, a television producer and
the former chief content officer at Hearst, says, “He’s hypercurious,
supersmart, and restless. I think the restlessness is key. It’s what
makes him such interesting company.” But restlessness isn’t exactly
a presidential quality. An ex-employee argues, “The thing about
Mike is he actually isn’t that interesting—he’s smart, and you can
have a good time talking to him, but it’s like talking to any old Jewish
relative of mine. The first time I met him, he started complaining
about some soup he got that didn’t taste right. I just met the guy, and
he was, like, complaining about his sweet-and-sour soup.”
In Providence, Bloomberg pulls out Raimondo’s chair for her,
to sit for coffee, then deadpans that he had to do it or “my mother
would shoot me.”
“What should we be talking about that they could overhear by
accident?,” Bloomberg asks showily, gesturing to the cameras, but
doesn’t wait for an answer. “The crowds are getting bigger and the
number of reporters,” he muses to Raimondo. “You can tell what
editors think when they send them. They think we’re going to win
all of a sudden or have a good chance. So they’re all showing up.”
“You have a chance,” Raimondo says. “Better than a chance.”THE BEGINNING OF FEBRUARY 2020 may be remembered
mostly for the global spread of a lethal virus, but close seconds may
include the nearly unanimous Republican vote against
impeachment in the Senate, followed by Trump’s victory tour of
firings and pardons; the possible erasure of Iowa and New
Hampshire’s pride of place on the electoral map; and the launch of
one of the most quixotic, expensive, and risky presidentialHE MORNING AFTER PRESIDENT TRUMP
delivered his self-congratulatory State of the Union speech while
still in the midst of impeachment, several reporters are waiting in
a Providence, Rhode Island, vegan café for Michael Bloomberg.
Most of them came from Philadelphia last night, where they
covered his nighttime rally that had a laser-light show, buffet, open
bar, and rap performance. Like the rest of the media at the time,
they have been caught up in a kind of fever dream in which,
suddenly, in the brief interval between the Iowa collapse of Joe
Biden and the appearance of Bloomberg himself on a Nevada
debate stage, it seems possible that a plutocrat could waltz his way
to the Democratic nomination as comfortably as he had to the New
York City mayoralty, including an extralegal third term. How
plausible a fever dream? The reporters are themselves unsure. One
of them, picking at a coconut-yogurt-açai-organic-oat bowl, asks
somewhat idly, “Were there real people there last night?”—
meaning, was it stocked with paid Bloomberg staffers and spouses
and neighbors or were the bodies in the hall actual Bloomberg
supporters? “They were real people,” says a tall cameraman,
cocking his head. “It was kind of amazing.”
Nearby, the would-be savior of the Democratic Party is resting
in a car. Punctual and perfectionistic, the kind of guy who has
advised people not to take bathroom breaks and once said “I don’t
have anything in common with people who stand on escalators,”
Bloomberg had arrived early in his plane and soon strides up to the
café alongside Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo, a former
venture capitalist who is about to become the first governor to
endorse Bloomberg. The former mayor is a slip of a man in black
tasseled leather shoes. One could call his suit navy, but it’s somehow
more refined than the color implies and so well cut one imagines a
tailor adjusting a small seam when he gains or loses a pound. His
face’s central plane—nose, cheeks, brow—is flat, but around his
jowls, skin creases like a Chinese paper fan. He smiles only occa-
sionally and not with his mouth. Like many extremely wealthy men
born in the mid-20th century, he comes off somewhat effete, his
hands making small, gentle gestures even as the tone of his voice
veers from low-gear chattiness to swashbuckling machismo.
Raimondo and Bloomberg inch toward a counter to buy coffee
as his team scurries into position—an advance man in a spotless
suit who mentions John Mellencamp just endorsed Bloomberg;
a recent grad in pearl earrings who now isn’t sure she can take
a post–Super Tuesday vacation to Tulum. As the cashier shoots
Bloomberg a wary look, he picks up a packet of gluten-free energy
balls. “Will I feel better afterward?,” he asks. He reaches into his
pocket for a nondescript black wallet, from which he does not take
out $60 billion, but merely a $20 bill, and leaves a healthy tip.
“Well,” he says, turning to the restaurant’s owner, “we got back
late from Philadelphia, then I unpacked because I was away for
four or five days, and by the time you put everything back,” he trails
off. “And I read for a few minutes. Which was a mistake. So I could
use some more energy.”