Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg Actively Considering 2020 Run For President
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- It's a story CBS2 first told you about nearly three months ago -- the possibility of Michael Bloomberg running for president in 2020.
As Marcia Kramer reported Monday, the former three-term mayor of New York City is now publicly in the hunt.
Bloomberg isn't wearing any "Mike 2020" buttons yet, but he's now making appearances across the country, the kind that get him publicity and plenty of it as he decides whether to actually order the banners, buttons and doodads for a White House run.
"I believe it was the first salvo 'Bloomberg for President,'" said Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco. "He's gonna be a Democrat this time. He's gonna run as a Democrat."
Brown made much of Bloomberg's recent appearance at a climate summit, just one of a number of events across the West Coast and Nevada that give the man who ran for mayor first as a Republican, then an Independent, the opportunity to build street creds to run for president. In Las Vegas, he talked up electric cars.
"Soon, the states' major highways will have electric charging stations. That's one thing happening in Vegas that shouldn't stay in Vegas," Bloomberg said.
In testing the waters, Bloomberg has mapped out a strategy that has him donating $80 million to help Democrats take back the House, traveling to battleground states that will be critical to a presidential run and collecting political IOUs along the way.
Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania are on list list, possibly even South Carolina, an early primary state.
"Over the next six weeks I will be supporting candidates who will take action on climate change and other issues, including gun violence," Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg's advisers are said to believe that with liberals tripping all over themselves to move to the left, the former mayor's route to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is to be the only moderate challenging President Donald Trump.
By the way, he's also preparing to re-issue a revised edition of his biography, called "Bloomberg On Bloomberg," naturally.
For more on this story, check out coverage from our colleagues at CBS News.
