Brooklyn for Bloomberg? I don’t think so

The people of Brooklyn have a lot of time for most of the Democratic candidates... but there’s one they definitely do not commend: billionaire Mike Bloomberg. So Holly Baxter was surprised when she stumbled across a street full of Bloomberg posters

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As I was walking around the neighbourhood in Brooklyn this weekend, I noticed something strange. It wasn’t the fact that there’s a bar advertising “exotic beers of the world” illustrated with an image of a can of Stella Artois – that one’s always there. It wasn’t the fact that more than one person was walking towards the park with a dog strapped into a baby stroller – that much is de rigueur in New York City these days. It wasn’t even the fact that the eye-wateringly expensive clothes store next to my favourite noodle place had started a cereal café by the coat racks, where Froot Loops and Oreo-O’s were going for $15 a plastic cup.

No, it was something altogether more political than that (you may argue that the politics of repurposing cheap cereal to sell in fancy containers to people trying on $5,000 jackets is actually fascinating, and I would agree with you, but let’s stick with the issue at hand).

Brooklyn isn’t an area that shies away from political statements. Long before anyone even knew how to pronounce ill-fated presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s surname, I watched a man walk past the brunch place where I was shovelling waffles into my mouth wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed “BOOT-EDGE-EDGE”. I have a similar bit of deliberately obscure political merchandise myself in the form of a black shirt with a signed Polaroid-style photo of Andrew Yang on the front. My fiancé has one from the same store with Yang’s unofficial slogan “MATH” emblazoned across it. I realise how this makes us sound.

Despite the well-developed fan bases of the various Democratic candidates – most of whom have now dropped out back into obscurity or publicly announced that they’re backing Joe Biden – pretty much everyone I’ve met in my local area is “blue no matter who”. In other words, they have their preferred person but they’ll vote for any Democrat standing against Trump in November. Even the fabled “Bernie Bros”, known for sometimes referring to Sanders’ opponents as “rats” and “establishment stooges”, aren’t usually as bad in real life as they appear on social media. There’s a car parked on my street which has a large “Bernie 2020” on the side, as well as one each for Yang, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and Julian Castro on the back.

There’s really only one candidate who people in New York have very little time for – and that’s Michael Bloomberg.

Will people in Kings County believe yet another billionaire Manhattanite with a Messiah complex?

Now, you might find that strange, considering Bloomberg was the mayor of New York not that long ago. He was also pretty close with then-President Obama during that time, if you believe his numerous campaign advertisements. But there’s nobody New York hates more than a former mayor running for the highest office in the land (see: Bill de Blasio). And there are a host of reasons why liberal Brooklynites might not consider their values chiming perfectly with Bloomberg’s: the racially controversial practice of stop and frisk for one thing; and the fact that he is a proud billionaire with a media empire at a time when many young Democrats are questioning whether billionaires should exist at all.

So when I passed by a house in the area with two huge “BLOOMBERG 2020” signs in the upper and lower windows, I quite literally stopped in my tracks. I was so stunned that I took out my phone to take a picture – and bumped headlong into the woman who lived there, who was returning from the grocery store with three big bags of shopping.

“That’s my baby,” the woman told me brightly, pointing to a toddler standing in the window on another floor of the house. “And those are your posters?” I asked. She nodded. She owned the entire four-floor brownstone property on a prestigious street near the park; she was almost certainly a multimillionaire herself.

“I haven’t seen many Bloomberg posters round New York,” I said, in an effort to explain why I was standing outside this woman’s house with my phone camera raised like a creep or a burglar.

“Oh, we love him,” she replied, nonplussed. “I think you’ll be seeing a lot more.”

Doubt it, lady, I thought to myself as I walked off down the street – and was almost immediately confronted with a previously empty shop window that was now pasted over with hundreds of Bloomberg posters. Ever the journalist, I took a picture of those, too: “NEW YORK FOR MIKE”, said one; “WOMEN FOR MIKE” said another (predictably pink) one beside it; “I LIKE MIKE”, said two of them, which seemed almost comically subdued despite the rhyme. There was also a large map of the States with “SUPER TUESDAY” written above it and two recently handmade and hand-coloured posters: “DIAL FOR DEMOCRACY” and “CALLS FOR MIKE!” Behind this wall of posters sat a small group of teenagers at one table in the middle of an otherwise empty room, phones to their ears. Presumably, these were hired part-timers doing paid outreach for Bloomberg.

As intriguing as it is that the Bloomberg contingent have come out for Mike in Brooklyn, I couldn’t find a single other person in my area who even believed that I saw what I’d saw. It was too bizarre, they thought, too out of sync with the area. For whatever reason, though, it’s true. Bloomberg wants Brooklyners to think he can “get it done”, as the campaign slogan goes. Will people in Kings County believe yet another billionaire Manhattanite with a Messiah complex? I doubt it. But then again, I doubted it last time. Only time will tell.