Former presidential candidate will also transfer offices in six battleground states to help defeat Trump
Mike Bloomberg is transferring $18m (15.5m) from his presidential campaign to the Democratic National Committee in the largest single such transfer ever made.
The largesse is the latest sign of the billionaire businessmans continued involvement in the presidential race since ending his own campaign this month after a lacklustre showing on Super Tuesday. In the 3 March primaries the former New York city mayor won only one US territory.
Bloombergs contribution amounts to more than the national partys typical cash balance. The transfer will help the DNC make up some of the steep fundraising shortfall it has compared with its Republican counterpart, which routinely has raised tens of millions more in election cycles.
Bloomberg, one of the worlds wealthiest men with a net worth estimated to exceed $60bn, promised throughout his campaign that he would help Democrats try to defeat Donald Trump regardless of how his own White House bid fared.
The Bloomberg campaign, which hired a staff of 2,400 people across 43 states, will also transfer its offices in six pivotal states to the Democratic parties in those states, to help accelerate their hiring and organising. Those states are Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Former Bloomberg campaign staffers in those offices will continue to be paid by his campaign through the first week in April and have full benefits through the end of April. After that, they could in theory offer the state parties a trained and ready pool of potential hires to build out their operations heading into the November general election.
Bloomberg had promised staffers when they were hired that they would be paid until November, but earlier this month most of his campaign team was told they had been let go and would be paid until the end of March.
DNC officials said Bloombergs money and real-estate transfers would be used to expand the partys 12-state battleground program, with a focus on hiring additional staffers to work in organising and data operations. Bloombergs former campaign employees will not have any advantage in the hiring process, officials said.
Bloomberg and his team were making good on their commitment to stay engaged through to November, said Tom Perez, the DNCs chairman. He said the support would help Democrats win up and down the ballot and help make sure Donald Trump was a one-term president.
Bloomberg dropped out of the race on 4 March, the day after his Super Tuesday disappointment. Since then he has given tens of millions of his own money to various Democratic groups and causes.
In a memo to Perez announcing the transfer, the Bloomberg campaign said that while Trumps mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis should cost him, we should also not assume that Trumps incompetence will be enough to make him a one-term president.
Trumps ability to lie and propagate misinformation, particularly using digital tools and other means with swing voters in battleground states, will continue to ensure a close race in November. Every decision we make as Democrats must account for this, the campaign wrote.
Since exiting the race, Bloomberg has contributed $500,000 to Voto Latino to help register Latino voters, $2m to the group Collective Future to help register African American voters, and $2m to Swing Left, a group focused on electing Democrats in swing districts.
The DNCs battleground effort targets Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. Its a mix of states that have flipped back-and-forth between the two parties in recent presidential cycles and a few that have leaned Republican but are expected to be competitive in November.
Though the DNC will never match its GOP counterpart in financial muscle, Perez and party leaders have placed a premium on coordination across the Democratic spectrum this presidential cycle after watching Republicans quietly upstage them on data operations and voter outreach in 2016.
Bloombergs direct aid to the national party is possible only because he was a presidential candidate. Federal campaign finance laws place caps on how much an individual can give a political party committee. But individuals can loan or contribute as much of their personal money to their campaigns as they want. In turn, presidential campaigns can transfer unlimited sums to official party committees.
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