Remember Mike Bloomberg’s pledge to spend a significant sum helping the Democratic nominee, no matter who it would be? Yeah, never mind. Bernie Sanders’s campaign says it doesn’t want Bloomberg’s help, and the Bloomberg campaign doesn’t want to help a campaign that rejects it.
. . . Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ closest aide, said the Democratic front-runner would not want Bloomberg’s help.
“It’s a hard no,” Weaver told NBC News after Tuesday night’s debate. “Bernie has said he’s going to fund his presidential campaign with small-dollar contributions, and I think we can do that. I think we can raise over a billion dollars in small-dollar contributions.”
Sanders cannot control or dictate what independent groups do on his behalf since campaign finance law prohibits candidates from coordinating strategy with outside groups. But Bloomberg’s team has said the mogul would not spend on behalf of a candidate who rejected his help.
“Bernie said he didn’t want [Bloomberg’s] money, so we’re not going to. I don’t think it would be prudent to spend on behalf of somebody who didn’t want it,” Howard Wolfson, a senior adviser to Bloomberg, told NBC News after the debate.
This is not that shocking. It’s one thing to commit to spend money to help the eventual nominee in the abstract; it’s another when the nominee more or less doesn’t believe you should have the fortune you’ve made, and contends you’re only supported by billionaires. Both Bloomberg and Sanders genuinely and vehemently oppose what the other man stands for, and it was always unlikely that either septuagenarian would or could just put those objections aside.