Bloomberg Mounting Massive Campaign Effort in Arkansas

Presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg marches in Little Rock. (Source: Bloomberg campaign website.)

Presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is ramping up for a massive campaign in Arkansas. Bloomberg campaign officials say the effort is expected to be the largest ground effort in Arkansas during a presidential primary.

During a conference call on Feb. 24, multiple campaign officials laid out Bloomberg’s strategy for capturing Arkansas, as well as Oklahoma and Tennessee. According to Arkansas State Director Evan Tanner, the campaign has already built an extensive team of approximately 20 staff members, including 13 organizers. “We’re focused on doing the largest ground game in presidential history. We’ve already had the largest presence of any campaign on the ground here,” he says.

The campaign has established its primary field offices in Little Rock, Fayetteville and West Memphis. However, it also has smaller satellite offices in Batesville, Pine Bluff and El Dorado.

Bloomberg’s Arkansas campaign members have taken to the streets, knocking on 9,000 doors in the state. The goal is to knock of more than 30,000 doors by March 3 – Super Tuesday.

In addition, Tanner says the campaign has focused heavily on reaching voters through electronic means, making 30,000 calls and sending roughly 112,000 text messages to date.

The billionaire founder of financial information and media company Bloomberg LP, Bloomberg is self-financing his campaign. On of the richest individuals in America, he is ranked at #8 on the Forbes 400 list, which puts his personal fortune at $61.9 billion. To date, he has spent approximately $452 million on advertising, according to an NPR report.

Bloomberg is positioning himself as the only candidate who can reliably take on President Donald Trump. Dan Kanninen, Bloomberg’s 2020 States Director, says that the candidate’s main goal is defeating Trump.

“Donald Trump represents an existential and unprecedented threat to our future and defeating him in November must be our number one goal. In order to do that, we need Democrats, we’ll also need independents and some Republicans coming together. We can’t get it done if we nominate a candidate like Senator Sanders, who has just attacked his own party, declaring war on the so called Democratic establishment,” Kannien says.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) was declared the winner of the Nevada Democratic Caucus, capturing 24 delegate votes, which equates to 46.8 percent. Former Vice President Joe Biden managed 20.2 percent of the delegates while Mayor Pete Buttigieg had the third highest total of delegates at 14.3 percent. Bloomberg opted to forego the caucus.

Kannien critiqued Sanders, saying that he would be unable to “build a broad coalition necessary to win” the presidential election. He says the consequences of naming Sanders to the Democratic ticket could be the reelection of Trump, as well as the potential of losing the House of Representatives and the opportunity to flip the U.S. Senate.

One of Kannien’s criticisms was Sanders’ relationship of the National Rifle Association (NRA), which Kannien says is incompatible with the values of the Democratic Party. “It’s especially hard to build that broad coalition when you’ve alienated and a key part of the democratic base. On one of the top issues that poll after poll, voters tell us they care about is gun safety. Bernie Sanders who spends his entire career paying back to inner Ray for getting him elected to Congress,” he says.

For background, Sanders voted against the Brady Bill in 1993, which established national background checks on firearms. In addition, he voted in favor of a 2003 and a 2005 law that prohibit lawsuits against gun manufacturers for unlawful misuse of a firearm.

During a question and answer period, a reporter pointed out that Bloomberg’s stance on gun control would likely not be a winning issue in Southern states, including Arkansas. However, Kannien says gun control is an issue that Bloomberg believes strongly in and does not plan to abandon.

“Mike has never been someone who is afraid of taking out a fight where a fight needs to be had,” he says. “It speaks to Mike’s core values and someone stands up for what he believes and fight hard for it.”

Kannien also commented on Bloomberg’s performance in the recent Democratic debates. During the event, he was repeatedly criticized by his fellow candidates, an occurrence Kannien suggested was unfair, noting that he was criticized 57 times during the debate.

“I think obviously this was Mike’s first debate in 10 years. These other candidates on the stage had perfected the art of the attack on that stage. It was eight or nine debates under the belts for all of them,” he says. “You can’t overstate what it’s like to be on that stage, having not done that in quite some time.”