Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, under extraordinary pressure from friends and fellow billionaires to do more to help Vice President Kamala Harris, recently donated about $50 million to a nonprofit organization that is supporting her presidential run, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.
The donation followed months of arm-twisting from associates such as Bill Gates, investor Ron Conway and Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn. Mr. Bloomberg recently spoke with Ms. Harris in a private phone call, according to two people briefed on the conversation.
Mr. Bloomberg’s decision conforms to a strategy that has become his trademark: Confounding Democratic operatives by refusing to make early investments — only to come in hot and heavy in the homestretch. But unlike his previous big gifts, this one was intended to be kept under wraps, and that secrecy has made unaware Democrats more anxious than they have been most autumns.
His contribution was made to Future Forward USA Action, the dark-money vehicle of Future Forward, Ms. Harris’s main super PAC.
Mr. Bloomberg, who is 82 years old and has an estimated net worth of $105 billion, is the second largest disclosed individual donor to Democrats in this election cycle, after the investor and philanthropist George Soros. But publicly, Democrats observed that Mr. Bloomberg was donating nowhere close to what he had spent during the presidency of Donald J. Trump.
The $47 million he had given in federally disclosed political contributions during this election cycle, before his new nonprofit donation, was less than half of the $95 million he disclosed to help Democrats retake Congress in the 2018 midterms.
And so in recent months, frustrated Democrats in his close orbit had urged him to consider a large donation to help Ms. Harris in an election expected to be decided by razor-thin margins. Mr. Bloomberg’s advisers, to say nothing of the man himself, have fielded jittery queries for months about what Democrats saw as his relatively conspicuous absence.
Mr. Bloomberg declined to comment for this article.
Mr. Bloomberg became a registered Democrat only in 2018, but he has been counted upon in Democratic circles, perhaps overly so, for his late-in-the-cycle gifts.
It is now, officially, late.
The former mayor, a self-described “data nerd,” has a logic: He tells others that he believes he can find strategic gaps — “unmet needs,” in the language of his philanthropy — once candidates and other donors place their own bets.
“I very clearly disagree with that strategy because time, not late money, is always our best weapon — but that’s where we are this cycle,” said Quentin James, who runs the Collective PAC, a group aimed at building Black political power that got over $2 million from Mr. Bloomberg in 2020, but hasn’t been funded in 2024.
Mike Smith, the head of House Majority PAC, which has received almost $70 million from Mr. Bloomberg over the past decade, including $10 million this year, defended Mr. Bloomberg’s “deliberate” and “sophisticated” approach to late spending.
“There should be no expectation that any individual donor is just going to give to you,” he said. “Mike’s not giving money to anyone just to give money.”
Mr. Bloomberg started his own super PAC in 2012 and the independent injected $10 million that October to help former President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. He spent $29 million in 2014 and $24 million in 2016, with over half coming after late August each time.
His spending skyrocketed in the Trump era. In the 2018 and 2020 elections, not counting his own short-lived and self-financed run for president, he gave over $250 million combined, in mostly late contributions.
When Mr. Bloomberg ran for president in 2020, he spent $1.1 billion in a real-world experiment on whether enormous money could buy votes. It couldn’t. He got creamed in the Democratic primaries.
But he had also promised that, win or lose, he would spend his fortune to defeat Mr. Trump. And so in mid-September of that year, his advisers unveiled a splashy, ultimately unsuccessful $100 million commitment to help Joseph R. Biden win in Florida. All told, excluding what he spent on his own campaign, he spent about $173 million on the 2020 elections — $126 million more than Mr. Bloomberg’s public giving in this presidential cycle.
Mr. Bloomberg’s defenders say his 2020 budget was unique since he was a former candidate. But Mr. Bloomberg, associates say, had been reluctant to fully engage in 2024 for other reasons. He found his 2020 presidential run not just expensive but scarring.
He left in a sour mood, sulking at people like Senator Chuck Schumer of New York for not endorsing him. Democrats spent months trying to get him re-engaged in liberal causes, even pitching his team on buying the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group.
And Mr. Bloomberg, a titan of industry, has had a somewhat frosty relationship with Mr. Biden, his former primary rival, associates say. When Mr. Biden endorsed Ms. Harris, Mr. Bloomberg issued a statement that pointedly did not, and he was dismissive of her capabilities in a private conversation at the time, according to a person who heard his remark.
Mr. Bloomberg slowly warmed up, speaking fondly of her at a dinner at the mansion of the business executive Ken Chenault in Sag Harbor around the time of the convention, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
But despite detesting Mr. Trump, Mr. Bloomberg was initially reluctant to give more than the $19 million he donated to Future Forward’s super PAC in May. Associates said he believed there was not the same unmet need this year, given Ms. Harris’s fund-raising success. A better use of his money, he believed, might be initiatives in states to expand abortion access, which have received $5 million of his largess.
But a few weeks ago, Mr. Bloomberg met with Ms. Harris’s economic team at Bloomberg headquarters, and he gave his feedback on her economic and housing plan, said a person with knowledge of the meeting. Ms. Harris made a check-in phone call. The efforts were part of a concerted push to make Mr. Bloomberg feel appreciated by the party and its nominee. And then, finally, came the $50 million check.
It is not clear why Mr. Bloomberg, whose political investments are typically announced with much fanfare, preferred to give to an undisclosed vehicle this time around. But plenty of Democrats are just thankful for the gift.
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