Third-party Bloomberg?

The political highlight today was not Hillary Clinton's new campaign theme music, but that Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, is now a former Republican and has officially declared himself to be an Independent. The scuttlebutt became how much money he has socked away in his piggy bank--$6 Billion Dollars--therefore it was reported he can afford to spend $1B (perhaps a bit less) on a presidential campaign. It was reported that Mayor Bloomberg wants to focus on being Mayor for the remainder of his term, an Independent Mayor mind you. Yet the Media went on trying to figure out if he ran, could he win? Or if he lost, from whom would he take votes?

Addressing the question of will he run, Bloomberg has name recognition from being Mayor of New York City since the election in 2001. Perhaps more people are familiar with the name Bloomberg from his financial business established twenty-six years ago, but it's more likely people recognize his name from the media. Like Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey, Michael Bloomberg is a media mogul with his own magazine, television program and radio show. He publishes books and has a very popular financial news website, Bloomberg.com. During my mortgage broker years, it was my favorite go-to site for daily financial news and still is.

As important as name recognition, it's vital that the candidate have very deep pockets and/or access to same. Suffice to say, Mr. Bloomberg will never worry if he can pay the mortgage or afford to take a vacation, $6 Billion should cover it. Most people with regular bank accounts could not run for the Oval Office. It doesn't matter that most of us with any sense would not care to run nor want the job.

So let's say that Bloomberg is going to run for President.

Taking a stroll down a painful memory lane, recall that Vice President Al Gore lost the 2000 election by 537 votes in Florida (one source checked said 543 votes). This was in spite of winning the popular vote with 537,179 more votes than the other guy. The irony is Gore lost the election by .10% of the very margin that he won the popular vote. For the record, I'm still not over it, but I somehow manage to get through the day.

Gore could have used another 544+ votes in Florida. Third party candidates in Florida, all 8 of them, received 138,027 total votes. The Socialist Workers party alone received 562 votes. As we learned, there were many extenuating circumstances; the significant number of disenfranchised voters, the fact that 12% of Florida Democrats voted for Bush, and the involvement of the U.S. Supreme Court. Yet the fact remains that third party candidates had an impact on the outcome of the election.

If Bloomberg runs he'll take votes from someone, though there is the off chance he could win. I certainly hope it's from the Republican candidate.

[Photo courtesy of Creative Commons.]