But Bloomberg’s early moves also signaled he would be approaching the campaign in an unconventional manner: In an acknowledgment of his own late start in the race, Bloomberg and his advisers have decided he would pursue a risky strategy of skipping all four traditional early-state contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, and focus instead on big states that hold primaries soon afterward.
Bloomberg, who flirted with running for president in 2008 and 2016 and early this year but had never taken a formal step to do so, filed paperwork and qualified for the Alabama primary Friday afternoon. The Deep South state has the earliest primary filing deadline in the country, effectively forcing Bloomberg to put his name into contention this week.
While Bloomberg has not made a final decision to run, his allies say he intends to enter the campaign. His consideration of a 2020 bid reflects the fluidity of the race and the angst among many leading Democrats about whether Biden is strong enough to win the nomination as a centrist standard-bearer.
Bloomberg’s moves have already rippled through an unsettled Democratic field. While polls show that most Democratic voters are content with their current array of candidates, there are significant pockets of unease, most of all among politically moderate donors and leaders of the party establishment who are concerned about Biden’s prospects in the primary and fear that Warren and Sanders are too liberal for the general election.
On Friday, Bloomberg’s camp began to lay out in public a theory of how he might win the nomination: Advisers said he intended to stake his candidacy on big, delegate-rich primary states like California and Texas, where Bloomberg’s personal fortune could be put to extensive use.
Troy Price, chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, criticized Bloomberg for spurning the circuit of early states that he said “makes candidates and their campaigns better prepared for a general election fight.”
Bloomberg’s advisers are preparing to meet several other upcoming filing deadlines, including in Arkansas. It was not clear Friday night if Bloomberg still planned to file paperwork by next Friday to qualify for the New Hampshire primary, as he originally intended.
Bloomberg, 77, was elected mayor of New York City three times on the Republican ticket.
This article originally appeared in
.