NEW YORK - Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday ended his 2020 presidential bid and backed former Vice President Joe Biden in his effort to become the Democratic nominee.

The decision came after he spent over $500 million on a campaign that he banked would do well on Super Tuesday — but had a disappointing showing.


Bloomberg, 78, is not a man known to get emotional. But on Wednesday, as he shut down his presidential campaign, surrounded by hundreds of supporters, he repeatedly choked back tears.

"Today I believe that our great nation still sees that light in the old north church tower, the light of freedom, the light of liberty, the light of equality, and the light of opportunity," he said, his voice heavy.

Speaking to supporters, Bloomberg thanked all those who contributed to the campaign, saying they made history with his late entry into the race.

"Now today, I want to say how grateful I am to everyone who has been part of our team, and I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your support, your work, and your votes," Bloomberg said. "And I'm just telling you, the American public should be saying thank you to you as well. You really made history, you really did."

Bloomberg said he joined the race to defeat President Donald Trump and was leaving for the same reason now. He added that he thought Biden had the best shot to beat Trump.
 


Bloomberg will no doubt continue to spend lavishly on the presidential race, though now in support of Biden. And he will likely return to his day job running Bloomberg L.P., the company that he founded and that he had said he might have to sell if he had won the White House.

The only place where the Manhattan billionaire pulled out a win Tuesday was the U.S. territory of American Samoa, where he won 49.9 percent of the vote (175 votes). It earned him four delegates.

Trump quickly took to Twitter, saying Bloomberg "didn't have what it takes" and will now likely back Biden's campaign heavily with cash.
 


BOWING OUT AFTER A SUPER TUESDAY CLUNKER

Bloomberg did not win any of the 14 states that held primaries Tuesday, the biggest night of voting in the race for president until November. Democrats were vying for their share of more than 1,300 pledged delegates — about a third of the total up for grabs in 2020 — across 14 states and a diverse electorate. A candidate needs 1,991, a majority, to secure the nomination.
 


The final delegate tally for the candidates wasn't confirmed as of this writing, but Biden and Sanders won all the states Bloomberg was vying for.

According to Associated Press projections, Biden won ten of the Super Tuesday states: Texas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maine.

Sanders took four: California, Vermont, Utah, and Colorado.

It's not clear how many delegates Bloomberg will win when the final results are tallied, but he was well behind Biden and Sanders, and he cleared the 15 percent threshold to earn some delegates in only a handful of the Super Tuesday states.

"After yesterday’s results, the delegate math has become virtually impossible, and a viable path to the nomination just no longer existed," Bloomberg said Wednesday.

Bloomberg talked up the nearly 2 million votes he won Tuesday, but that total was nowhere near enough to keep him in contention.

"Today, I'm sorry we didn't win," he said. "But it's still the best day of my life, and tomorrow is going to be even better."

It was a blow for the mayor, who was hoping to make waves on Super Tuesday and campaigned heavily in those states. He actually skipped the first four Democratic nominating contests:

  • Iowa caucuses (February 3)
  • New Hampshire primary (February 11)
  • Nevada caucuses (February 22)
  • South Carolina primary (February 29)

The mayor, who entered the race in late November, had to swiftly make up ground to compete with candidates like Sanders, Biden, Warren, and others, who have spent months traveling the country meeting voters. His opponents had much of 2019 to build out extensive teams of staffers on the ground; and no candidate has ever won a modern primary after entering the race so late. According to FiveThirtyEight, since 1976, no eventual president nominee (excluding incumbent presidents) has ever launched their campaign with less than a year to go before the general election. Bloomberg was hoping to smash that streak.

RENEWED CRITICISM OF HIS TIME AS MAYOR

Despite the unusual strategy, Bloomberg quickly rose in the polls, to about 15 percent in his latest average of national polls, according to FiveThirtyEight

But as a result his record as mayor came under renewed scrutiny — fresh fodder for a national audience that perhaps was not aware of what he did in New York City — in the past several weeks.

The criticism was laid bare in the two Democratic presidential debates Bloomberg participated in in February. In a widely-panned debate debut in Las Vegas on February 19, every candidate on the stage attacked Bloomberg within the first 10 minutes, bringing up several controversial parts of his record, such as stop-and-frisk. Bloomberg's own campaign admitted it was a less-than-stellar performance, although the consensus was he performed better in Charleston, South Carolina, six days later.

But the debate was representative of the kind of heat Bloomberg faced in the lead-up to Super Tuesday. Candidates and their surrogates skewered the mayor for his past support of stop-and-frisk, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in particular hammered the billionaire for his record on women. A resurfaced national focus on allegations of harassment at his company, and inappropriate comments some former female employees said Bloomberg levied, came into particularly sharp focus in the debates.

"None of them accused me of doing anything other than maybe they didn't like a joke I told," Bloomberg said.

Warren in the Las Vegas debate demanded the mayor promise to release former women employees at Bloomberg L.P. from non-disclosure agreements if they wanted out. Bloomberg initially rejected the demand but offered to release three women two days later.

A CONSTANT EYE ON TRUMP

More of a political centrist than his fellow Democratic candidates, Bloomberg positioned himself as the best hope for unseating Trump in the general election campaign, for which candidates historically have moved closer to the center. The strategy was evident on the campaign trail, with Bloomberg pouring money into ads attacking the president's record and divisive rhetoric, including by buying a spot in Super Bowl LIV, and targeting states that Trump narrowly won in 2016, such as Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

And the anti-Trump rhetoric wasn't isolated to ads; Bloomberg frequently denounced the Republican at campaign rallies.

"He will say the state of our union is strong, but the truth — and we all know it — is our union is as divided as never before in our lifetimes," Bloomberg said at a rally in Philadelphia before the State of the Union. "We have an angry, out of control, lawless president dividing the American people and abusing his office."

As a result, Trump often snapped at Bloomberg on Twitter:
 


UNPRECEDENTED LEVELS OF SPENDING

The mayor has not been ashamed of using that wealth to unseat Trump, though. Bloomberg's campaign was officially barely over three months old, but for a nationwide advertising blitz he spent over $500 million — including more than $155 million in about the first five weeks of the campaign. As a result, Bloomberg flooded the airwaves.

At the debates, Bloomberg argued his huge sums of spending not only helped elect Democrats take back the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018, but it will help unseat Trump no matter who the nominee is (the mayor has promised to dump more than $1 billion of his personal wealth to defeat the president).

A LATE RUN

Bloomberg launched his bid for president late in the race in November, less than a year after saying he would not make a 2020 bid.

In March 2019, after months of speculation, Bloomberg said he wouldn't aim for the White House, citing the difficulties he expected if he joined the large field. The Democratic field winnowed only slightly between then and November, with fellow New Yorkers Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and current mayor Bill de Blasio dropping out.

In an op-ed released on the Bloomberg website earlier in 2019, the former mayor had said he believed he would beat Trump in a general election but added that he was "clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination in such a crowded field."

But the billionaire began backtracking late in 2019, moving to appear on the ballot in multiple primaries in order to meet some early filing deadlines and seemingly to give himself options in case he ran.

Like in his mayoral campaigns, Bloomberg did not take any political donations. Instead, he used his vast personal fortune to make his case to the American people.

Bloomberg, who served three terms, from 2002 to 2013 as the 108th mayor of New York City, joined a field that at the time featured more than 15 Democratic candidates.

A CENTRIST ON THE ISSUES

In early November, when news broke that Bloomberg was again considering a run, adviser Howard Wolfson said the former mayor was worried that the current crop of Democrats was "not well positioned" to defeat Trump. Bloomberg feared that many candidates were too far to the left, and that Biden, more of a moderate, was showing political vulnerabilities and hadn't broken away with the lead in the polls.

Unlike most of the Democratic presidential candidates, who touted their chops as liberal and progressive, Bloomberg is more of a political centrist:
 


Climate change regulations: Supports them, but he is skeptical of the "Green New Deal." He argues the United States cannot afford it and the legislation will never become law.

Wealth tax: Against it, saying it would be unconstitutional. The exact number isn't clear, but Bloomberg could stand to lose a chunk of his $52 billion fortune due to a wealth tax, which Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has espoused. However, in his campaign launch video, Bloomberg said he will make sure the wealthy pay more in taxes. It's unclear how much he wants them to pay.

Single-payer health care: Against a "Medicare for All" plan that would replace private insurance with a government-run program, saying the U.S. cannot afford it.

Gun control: Supports universal background checks, a ban on assault weapons, and "Red Flag Laws." The former mayor helped found Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for gun control across the nation. He does not, however, support a mandatory buyback program for assault weapons, calling it impractical and telling Margaret Hoover of PBS that it would be a rallying cry for gun rights' supporters.

MONTHS OF SPECULATION

In some ways, Bloomberg's run was a long time coming. He had teased a White House bid every four years. First, there was the 2008 cycle, when then-Mayor Bloomberg left the Republican Party, fueling speculation he would run for president as an independent. He ultimately took a pass.

"I've thought long and hard, it's been very flattering," he said at the time.

A similar sequence played out in 2012 and 2016, when Bloomberg determined he had no path to victory and could in fact throw the race to Trump.

But the billionaire had been fueling speculation for a 2020 run. In October 2018, he seemingly decided his best shot at winning was as a Democrat, re-registering with the party, arguing Democrats "provide the checks and balance our nation so badly needs." He also poured $110 million into U.S. House of Representatives races on behalf of Democrats.

He eventually did run as a Democrat, but his hopes of securing the nomination officially came to an end Wednesday.

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Reporting from Bobby Cuza was included in this story.

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