As Iowa takes measure of Democrats, Trump’s attention is on the candidate not there
The Iowa caucuses have arrived, and President Donald Trump’s focus is on the one guy who isn’t there.
Mike Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, skipped the first-in-the-nation contest entirely on Monday, despite his many rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination descending on the state to cap their year-long campaigns for its first-place title and handful of delegates.
Parallel to that conventional primary battle, Trump and Bloomberg are already campaigning as if the general election had arrived – spending and organizing on a large scale nationwide.
And there is evidence that Bloomberg is getting under the president’s skin.
Last month, Trump exploded on Twitter over Fox & Friends airing Bloomberg’s latest attack ad.
Of all of Bloomberg’s multi-million dollar ad buys, flooding states in which his Democratic rivals have yet to compete, this television ad – targeting Trump as an “erratic and out of control” president defined by arrogance and ignorance – was apparently too much for Trump.
“Mini Mike Bloomberg is playing poker with his foolhardy and unsuspecting Democrat rivals,” Trump wrote. “The fact is, when Mini losses, he will be spending very little of his money on these ‘clowns’ because he will consider himself to be the biggest clown of them all.”
Bloomberg was on the road at the time when Trump’s tweets posted and was alerted to them by an aide. “Oh, he’s scared,” Bloomberg replied, according to an adviser who was traveling with the candidate at the time. “What else are we doing?”
The GOP has a policy of responding whenever any Democratic presidential candidate visits a battleground state.
But it is Bloomberg – not the top-polling candidates in Iowa or New Hampshire, such as former Vice President Joe Biden, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren or former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg – who has received the greatest number of official Republican Party responses in the last month.
‘CAN’T BUY ENTHUSIASM’
The Trump campaign since last year has pursued a strategy of painting the entire Democratic field as hijacked by an increasingly radical progressive left wing.
“It doesn’t matter which Democrat comes out of the Iowa caucuses, and ultimately the Democrat primary, because they will be saddled with having to embrace and support extreme policies,” Erin Perrine, deputy communications director for the Trump campaign, wrote McClatchy in an email. “Whoever the nominee is will have to support some form of government takeover of healthcare, free healthcare for illegal immigrants, and the economy collapsing Green New Deal.”
The strategy toward Bloomberg has been somewhat different. Trump has personally denigrated the billionaire, while Republican Party leadership and rapid response staff for the Trump campaign have cast Bloomberg not as a socialist – as they have the rest of the field – but as an “anti-gun, pro-tax limousine liberal” attempting to impose “big government” on swing states like Florida and North Carolina.
Trump did make a push for attention in Iowa – but it was less about the state’s caucuses than about sending a national message, that the Republican Party is united and geared for the general election while Democrats fight among themselves.
Trump sent over a dozen surrogates and Cabinet officials to the Hawkeye State over the weekend – a show of force, according to one senior Republican Party official, meant to “interrupt” an otherwise Democratic night. The president himself visited Iowa on Thursday to rally Republican caucus-goers, despite running effectively unopposed.
In the Iowa vote that matters most – the one in November – the president is favored to win its six electoral votes because of a shift in rural non-college educated voters to the Republican Party, just eight years since Democrat Barack Obama won the state in his reelection campaign by a margin of 5.8%.
Bloomberg’s top aides have said that, due to this shift, he has focused his attention instead on the states where he views Trump most vulnerable in the fall.
The former mayor has chosen to ignore the first four caucuses and primaries, investing in delegate-rich states – such as Texas, California, New York and Florida – as well as general election battlegrounds where the Trump campaign has been building up staff, infrastructure, and field organizing since the 2018 midterm elections. While the rest of the Democratic field was in Iowa on Monday, Bloomberg went on a three-city tour through California, visiting Sacramento, Fresno and Los Angeles.
Trump has been discouraged by aides from lavishing Bloomberg with attention, fearful of elevating the candidate, but the president’s campaign and top advisers also have taken notice of the unusual political strategy deployed by Bloomberg.
“We are running a general election race. That’s what this is,” said Erin McPike, a spokesperson for Bloomberg. “The entire goal of this operation is to defeat him. We’re not trying to defeat anybody else. He is our No. 1 focus.”
Bloomberg’s team also believes its tactics are resonating with the president. After Bloomberg released a preview of his Super Bowl ad last week, focused on gun violence, the Trump campaign followed with a preview of its own ad – and an announcement they had doubled their ad buy.
On Sunday, ahead of the Super Bowl, Trump again turned his focus to Bloomberg, tweeting about his height and claiming he would “love” to run against the former mayor in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
“Obviously we are on their minds, ‘‘ McPike said.
But Republican Party operatives are publicly dismissing the former mayor’s chances.
“You can’t buy enthusiasm – you can’t buy energy to win a campaign. At some point, Mike Bloomberg has to show that he can win a state,” said Rick Gorka, communications director for the Republican National Committee. “Based on the current trajectory and on delegate math, if he is going to spend his way to the nomination, he’ll have to spend billions.”
RNC and Trump campaign officials do not expect Monday’s results in Iowa will clear the Democratic field, nor provide clarity at the start of a primary season that could last for months.
But Bloomberg is banking on just that, hoping a protracted Democratic contest prevents any single candidate from breaking out of the pack – and providing him with time to reach large states where money rather than retail politics provides the greatest advantage.
“Who’s to say anyone’s going to have real momentum?” said McPike, questioning whether the early states will change the dynamics of the race. “Nobody’s really bursting ahead with a ton of momentum – there’s a ton of push and pull in a ton of these states. And will anyone emerge strong?”
This story was originally published February 3, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
