Federal disclosures show the final tally for Michael Bloomberg’s heady attempt to capture the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, after only three months of an official campaign, was more than $1 billion. That’s more than either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton spent during the entire 2016 election cycle.
Of course, a billion dollars is less than two percent of Bloomberg’s fortune. And, no doubt, the billion spent left Bloomberg with some lovely campaign memorabilia and a recording he can watch over and over again of when he was thoroughly embarrassed in a debate on national television.
The thing is, he thinks he can get the last laugh by, once again, playing the billion-dollar man behind the curtain.
Enter Bloomberg’s central gun-control group, Everytown for Gun Safety. It just announced it will spend $13 million in federal and state-level elections in Texas and Arizona to oust pro-Second Amendment legislators.
Last November, Bloomberg did manage to impact Virginia’s off-year election; though, it remains to be seen if the anti-Second Amendment legislators he helped elect will retain power in Virginia, as there has been considerable pushback against the gun-control laws these state legislators advanced.
Voters in the Lone Star state, meanwhile, have already heard a lot of Bloomberg-style anti-gun messaging, thanks to Beto O’Rourke’s failed run for the U.S. Senate against Sen. Ted Cruz (R), and then for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. O’Rourke’s “hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15” threat, and more, didn’t get him any wins.
In Arizona, Everytown also says it will spend $5 million in an attempt to do what Bloomberg did in Virginia.
A lot of attention is already on the campaign between incumbent Sen. Martha McSally (R) and Democratic challenger Mark Kelly, husband of former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords (D) and co-founder of the gun-control group Giffords.
Kelly pushed a lot of hatred at the NRA in a 2014 book, Enough, he published with his wife. In the book, he even said the “NRA has, in essence, turned the tables on the Declaration of Independence.” It requires some anti-gun mind tricks to get what he means by that, as what is more independent than a free, law-abiding populace utilizing their Second Amendment-protected freedoms? Here’s a stab at it: According to Kelly’s twisted logic, anyone who owns a politically incorrect firearm is somehow harming other Americans’ pursuit of happiness.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg is also backing anti-gun Joe Biden, who is now the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president. And why wouldn’t he? Both Biden and Bloomberg want to make the Second Amendment into nothing more than fading words on an old historical document.
As for Bloomberg and his Scrooge McDuck-style fortune, a few lawsuits filed by his former campaign staff has given us another poignant example of Bloomberg’s do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do character.
In an unusual step for people who work on campaigns for a living, former campaign staff for Bloomberg’s failed presidential campaign actually filed class-action lawsuits against Bloomberg. They allege Bloomberg reneged on promises to pay campaign staff through November. This is pocket change to Bloomberg, but, if these former staffers of his are to be believed, he nevertheless decided his money would be better spent trying to convince voters in various states and across this great nation to vote away their freedom this November than it would be to pay people who worked to win him the White House.
