A photo on a Bloomberg blog post that does not show Mike Bloomberg’s face. Just mixin’ it up a little. :) Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images One major trend of presidential campaigns in the 21st century is how they’ve grown to more and more closely resemble a tech outfit, using digital solutions to make themselves more efficient. What was a curiosity in 2004 is now a major pillar of any serious campaign, right alongside oppo research and TV spending.
The Trump campaign took things further by using the platform, according to one Facebook executive, better than any other candidate, spending millions on targeted ads. On the flip side, Trump used his Twitter account to generate endless free publicity. It appears he is using a similar playbook this cycle.
Like anyone who sets foot on the campuses of companies like Google or Facebook, the Bloomberg campaign is luring people who might otherwise not be charismatic about the campaign effort with lavish perks. Field-organizer salaries start at $72,000, nearly twice what any other campaign is probably going to pay. Staffers get latest-gen iPhones and laptops too as well as three catered meals every day, just like tech-campus employees.
The flipside of this is what Bloomberg’s campaign is. A series of shots in the dark and money-sucking experimentation, buoyed by a single funding source. Bloomberg is not accepting donations and his campaign runs off of his own enormous fortune. It has been estimated that he could spend up to $1 billion on his campaign — an unfathomable amount of money to most Americans and also barely a dent in Bloomberg’s $62 billion.
bafeldman Cannot beat an incumbent candidate for the presidency; article after article during Obama 2012 - all vanished. Good news for this tech crew is they have a giant budget, win or lose. And they already lost.