New York Times – by Jonathan Martin
Michael R. Bloomberg plans to leave a $25 million footprint in the month before the midterm elections as part of a final push to elect centrist-oriented candidates of both parties.
Mr. Bloomberg will pay for television ads through his Independence USA PAC, spending that could play a pivotal role in two of the country’s most closely contested races for governor, in Michigan and Massachusetts. In both campaigns, he is backing the Republican.
In Michigan, the PAC will start a $2.3 million ad campaign this week on behalf of Gov. Rick Snyder, who is one of the Democrats’ top targets and has a narrow lead in polls over his Democratic opponent, Mark Schauer. Mr. Bloomberg is also making a late push to support Charlie Baker, the Republican nominee for Massachusetts governor, who is locked in a close race with the state’s attorney general, Martha Coakley, a Democrat.
In both states, though, Mr. Bloomberg is also going to broadcast ads for Democrats: Representative Gary Peters, who is running for the Senate in Michigan, and Seth Moulton, the Marine veteran who unseated a longtime congressman, John F. Tierney of Massachusetts, in a primary last month.
“He wants to elect people who are open and actually inclined to work with people across the aisle,” said Howard Wolfson, the political adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor and the principal owner of Bloomberg L.P.
The bipartisan contributions to moderates are in keeping with the money that Mr. Bloomberg directed earlier in the year to groups on the right like the United States Chamber of Commerce and the “super PAC” of Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and those on the left like Planned Parenthood and the Senate Majority PAC.
Mr. Bloomberg is also planning to spend additional money through Election Day on a Republican and a Democrat in both California and Pennsylvania. He will put out ads in support of Carl DeMaio, a gay Republican House candidate in the San Diego area, and Pete Aguilar, a Democrat who is seeking a House seat in the state’s Inland Empire. In Pennsylvania, Mr. Bloomberg is getting behind the Democratic candidate for governor, Tom Wolf, who holds a wide lead over Gov. Tom Corbett, and Representative Michael G. Fitzpatrick, a Republican who represents suburban Philadelphia.
Further, Mr. Bloomberg will fund ads on behalf of Gina Raimondo, the Democratic candidate for Rhode Island governor, who was attacked on the left in her primary this year. Mr. Bloomberg will also broadcast ads for Robert Dold, an Illinois Republican who is trying to reclaim the seat he lost in 2012 in the suburbs north of Chicago.
Mr. Bloomberg will also support financially a gun control referendum in Washington State and an Oregon ballot measure that would eliminate partisan primaries. He is also bipartisan in the political consultants he uses: Mike Murphy is making Mr. Bloomberg’s Republican ads, and Bill Knapp is making the Democratic ones.