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TUESDAY,FEBRUARY18,2020 | THEGLOBEANDMAILO NEWS | A
As most Democratic presidential
candidates were packing up their
New Hampshire primary cam-
paigns, Michael Bloomberg was
opening an office in the state in
preparation for the November
election. The message was clear:
The former New York mayor and
billionaire has no intention of
running a typical presidential
campaign. And as the ninth-rich-
est person in the country, he has
ample resources to play the long
game.
Until recently, the founder of
Bloomberg L.P., his eponymous
financial data and media behe-
moth, was seen as a long shot in a
crowded Democratic primary.
But in recent weeks, as former
vice-president Joe Biden stum-
bled through fourth-place finish-
es in Iowa and New Hampshire,
Mr. Bloomberg, who turned 78 on
Valentine’s Day, has suddenly
emerged in the eyes of many
moderate voters as the Demo-
cratic Party’s best hope. A Quin-
nipiac University poll from last
week placed him behind Ver-
mont Senator Bernie Sanders
and in a statistical dead heat with
Mr. Biden.
Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign is
gambling that voters will see him
as having the best chance to de-
feat Donald Trump, with the can-
didate framing himself as the
more capable of the two New
York billionaires.
“Our party needs a candidate
who can go toe to toe and fight
with him,” Mr. Bloomberg told a
campaign stop in Raleigh, N.C.,
Thursday. “He’s not going to bul-
ly me, and I’m not going to let
him bully you either.”
His sudden rise in the polls is
all the more surprising given that
Mr. Bloomberg is a former Re-
publican and titan of the finan-
cial industry, has little stage pres-
ence, has yet to appear on a state
ballot for the Democratic nomi-
nation or participate in a tele-
vised debate – and began his
campaign by apologizing for his
support for a controversial polic-
ing tactic that disproportionately
targeted minorities.
“It’s certainly not something
that four years ago I would have
thought: Oh, Bloomberg’s going
to come in and be the electability
candidate,” said Julian Brash, the
author ofBloomberg’s New York:
Class and Governance in the Luxury
Cityand a professor at Montclair
State University in New Jersey.
“It’s sort of ironic that it would be
him.”
His surging popularity has
alarmed his Democratic oppo-
nents, who have spent the past
week directing their fire at him.
“The simple truth is that May-
or Bloomberg, with all his mon-
ey, will not create the kind of ex-
citement and energy we need to
have the voter turnout we must
have to defeat Donald Trump,”
Mr. Sanders told a Democratic
Party event in Las Vegas on the
weekend.
Mr. Bloomberg responded on
Twitter Monday with a video of
offensive comments made by Mr.
Sanders’s supporters on social
media. “We need to unite to de-
feat Trump in November,” he
wrote. “This type of ‘energy’ is
not going to get us there.”
Mr. Trump, too, has been rat-
tled. He lashed out at Mr. Bloom-
berg, mocking his height as 5-
foot-4. (He is reportedly 5-foot-8.)
“Mini Mike Bloomberg is a LOSERwho has money but can’t debate
and has zero presence, you will
see,” the President wrote on Twit-
ter. Mr. Bloomberg wasted little
time responding to his former
golf buddy: “We know many of
the same people in NY. Behind
your back they laugh at you &
call you a carnival barking
clown.”
Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign is
unconventional. He jumped into
the race late in November after
ruling out a presidential bid. He
is eschewing early voting states
to spend more than US$300-mil-
lion on advertising in the 14
states that vote on March 3,
known as Super Tuesday. He has
refused donations – financing his
campaign entirely from his esti-
mated US$61-billion net worth.
As his competitors were bat-
tling it out in Iowa and New
Hampshire, he was quietly as-
sembling an extensive national
campaign infrastructure, open-
ing 150 offices and hiring more
than 2,400 staff.
His efforts have earned him
endorsements from more than
100 mayors, the most of any
Democratic candidate. “It’s a very
unorthodox strategy,” said Uni-
versity of Maryland political sci-
entist David Karol, an expert on
presidential primaries. “It has
never worked for anybody in the
past, but unprecedented things
have happened.”
For those who know Mr.Bloomberg, however, his rise is
the product of a methodical strat-
egy, one that echoes his tenure in
New York, where he was one of
only a handful of mayors to serve
three terms in office. “Mike
doesn’t do these things unless he
knows he’s going to win – not
knows he has a chance, knows
he’s going to win,” said veteran
Democratic pollster John Zogby,
who has conducted polling for
Mr. Bloomberg. “So he’s seeing
things that we mortals don’t.”
It’s possible to draw parallels
between his presidential cam-
paign and his first race for mayor,
in 2001, when he ran as a Repub-
lican, spending lavishly to hire a
campaign staff culled from the
upper echelons of business, gov-
ernment and academia.
Many of the key advisers on
his presidential campaign hail
from his time in the mayor’s of-
fice, from Bloomberg L.P. and
from his charitable arm, Bloom-
berg Philanthropies. Then, as
now, Mr. Bloomberg was a long-
shot candidate who gambled that
infighting within the Democratic
Party would help clear his way to
victory.
“He’s cautious and careful and
data-driven,” said Joyce Purnick,
a former long-time New York
Times political columnist and
the author ofMike Bloomberg:
Money, Power, Politics. “He knew
that he had a path to win the
mayoralty, just as he thinks nowhe has a path to win the presi-
dency.”
Unlike previous wealthy busi-
nessmen whose self-financed
presidential campaigns struggled
to gain traction, Mr. Bloomberg
has spent the past several years
building up a well of goodwill
among Democrats by funding
the party’s candidates and causes
such as gun control and climate
change. He spent more than
US$110-million supporting two
dozen Democratic candidates in
swing districts in the 2018 mid-
terms, helping the party retake
control of the House of Represen-
tatives.
But the years spent in New
York business and government
have left him with plenty of polit-
ical baggage.
He has defended himself
against allegations he fostered a
toxic work environment for fe-
male employees at Bloomberg.
And he was forced to apologize
for supporting stop-and-frisk, a
New York City Police Department
program that allowed officers to
search large numbers of people
for weapons, the majority of
whom were African-American
and Latino, and turned out to be
unarmed. A federal court
deemed the city’s use of the prac-
tice unconstitutional in 2013.
Mr. Bloomberg’s massive
wealth, earned selling financial
information to Wall Street, is an-
otherpotential liability, with
both the President and Mr. Sand-
ers revelling in attacking global
elites.
Mr. Bloomberg’s massive cam-
paign budgets – he spent almost
US$100-million to win his third
term as mayor – were also a point
of contention among pundits
and opponents in New York. But
voters ultimately seemed to ac-
cept his argument that his mon-
ey allowed him to be a truly inde-
pendent politician, unbeholden
to special interests.
“I think, for the most part,
New Yorkers, said to themselves:
Look, if he wants to spend part of
his fortune to run for office, that’s
his business,” Ms. Purnick said.
Mr. Bloomberg’s real test won’t
come until Super Tuesday, when
his name will finally appear on
the ballot in states that control a
third of the delegates needed to
win the nomination.
“Nobody else is going to have
TV ads in all those 14 states,” said
Bob Mulholland, a Democratic
National Committee member
from California who is backing
Mr. Biden. “But Bloomberg will.
He’s a whole new ballgame.”NewYorkbillionaire’s
suddenriseinpollsis
surprisinggiventhat
hehasyettoappear
inadebateorona
stateballotforthe
Democraticnomination
DemocraticpresidentialcandidateMichaelBloombergspeaksduringacampaigneventinChattanooga,
Tenn.,lastWednesday.Mr.BloombergiseschewingearlyvotingstatestospendmorethanUS$300-million
onadvertisinginthe14statessettovoteonMarch3.DOUGLASSTRICKLAND/REUTERSBloombergsurgeswithunconventionalcampaign
TAMSINMcMAHON
U.S.CORRESPONDENT
SANJOSE
One of Rwanda’s most famous
musicians has been found dead in
police custody, the latest in a long
list of dissidents to die under mys-
terious circumstances after tan-
gling with President Paul Kagame.
Kizito Mihigo, a popular gospel
singer and genocide survivor who
helped compose Rwanda’s na-
tional anthem, was found dead
Monday in a police cell in Kigali.
He was arrested last week for al-
legedly trying to cross the border
illegally into Burundi and was ac-
cused of trying to bribe the police
and seeking to join “terrorist
groups” there. Police, in a state-
ment quoted by semi-official
Rwandan media, said the 38-year-
old musician “used bed sheets to
strangle himself to death.”
But on social media, many op-
ponents of the Rwandan govern-
ment voiced skepticism about the
official version, saying the musi-
cian was killed by the police.
Human-rights activists are call-
ing for a full investigation. There
are growing concerns about hu-
man-rights abuses in Rwanda as it
prepares to host the Common-
wealth Heads of Government
Meeting in June.
Mr. Mihigo had been a cultural
icon in Rwanda – a hugely pop-
ular celebrity and peace activist
who often sang the national an-
them at state functions. But he
ran into trouble with the author-
ities in 2014 when he released a
song that questioned the official
version of the country’s 1994 gen-
ocide, in which an estimated
800,000 people died.
The song called for Rwandans
to remember all the victims, in-
cluding those who were “slaugh-
tered in revenge” – an implicit ref-
erence to the victims of Mr. Ka-
game’s army, which killed thou-
sands of people in the mid-1990s
as he seized control of the country
after the genocide.
The song was immediately
banned, and Mr. Mihigo was ar-
rested a few days later. He was sen-
tenced to 10 years in prison for
treason and conspiring to “mur-
der or harm”Rwandangovern-
ment leaders. He was released
from prison in 2018.
A police statement Monday
said Mr. Mihigo had been in a cell
for three days when he was found.
“Kizito Mihigo’s death in custo-
dy raises serious questions that
need a prompt and thorough in-
vestigation by the authorities,”
Lewis Mudge, Central Africa di-
rector at Human Rights Watch,
said in a statement. “The investi-
gation should examine the possi-
bility that Mihigo could have been
ill-treated or killed in custody.”
Amnesty International said it
was “shocked and deeply sad-
dened” by the news of Mr. Mihi-
go’s death. Authorities “must im-
mediately launch an independ-
ent, impartial and thorough in-
vestigation to determine the
cause of death,” Amnesty said in a
statement.
Last September, a senior offi-
cial of an opposition party was
stabbed to death by unidentified
attackers. At least six of the par-
ty’s members have died or disap-
peared over the past three years,
while nine others have been jailed
on terrorism allegations. Amnes-
ty International said the killings
and disappearances are alarming.
There is also evidence the gov-
ernment has sent death squads
on missions to kill dissidents
abroad. Last September, a South
African judge issued arrest war-
rants for two Rwandans with al-
leged links to theKagame govern-
ment, accusing them of involve-
ment in the strangulation death
of prominent dissident Patrick
Karegeya in Johannesburg.
Last month, a report by Human
Rights Watch documented how
street children in Kigali are rou-
tinely rounded up and beaten at
an official detention centre,
where they are kept in degrading
and overcrowded conditions.PopularRwandansinger
Mihigofounddeadincell
GEOFFREYYORK
AFRICABUREAUCHIEF
JOHANNESBURG