Bloomberg snags fifth congressional endorsement
Rep. Scott Peters endorsed Mike Bloomberg for president on Monday, citing his plans to fight climate change and spiraling gun deaths and holding him up as having the best chance to defeat President Donald Trump.
Peters, a California Democrat who will serve as national chair for Bloomberg’s climate, energy and environment council, is the fifth House member to sign on with the former New York mayor’s presidential campaign in recent days.
“I thought about it a lot, and the thing that convinced me Mike Bloomberg is the right candidate is that we don’t have to guess who he is: We know he’s a successful business executive, a successful mayor and we know through his philanthropy what he cares about — and that matches my values,” Peters told POLITICO, in announcing his decision. “Whether it’s guns, or climate or economic injustice, I just have a lot of confidence that this is a person who is up to the task on the big issues that face the country.”
In the interview, Peters added that electability — a central pillar of Bloomberg’s late-starting campaign — also contributed to his decision to endorse a candidate a week before the rest of the Democrats compete in the Iowa caucuses.
“All the polling shows that he’s one of the two or three most-likely candidates to beat Donald Trump” and the most likely to beat Trump in swing states, Peters said.
Bloomberg is banking on muddled results from the first four contests — where he is either not competing or not on the ballot at all. Boosted by more than $260 million in TV and digital ad spending, he has shot up to double digits in national surveys, leapfrogging Pete Buttigieg and hiring scores of aides as he prepares for his Super Tuesday debut. At the same time, several of his earliest endorsers praised the billionaire for committing to keep hundreds of aides in the field working against Trump even if Bloomberg himself isn’t the Democratic nominee.
An environmental lawyer who came up through San Diego politics before flipping a seat for Democrats in 2012, Peters is a vice chair of the pro-business group New Democrats, whose members huddled with Bloomberg on his recent visit to Capitol Hill. Peters, whose longtime chief of staff, MaryAnne Pintar, is a regional political director for Bloomberg in California, has warned Democrats against nominating a progressive like Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, saying their policies would make them more vulnerable to Trump in November.
“I do believe we need an alternative to Sen. Sanders and Sen. Warren,” Peters told POLITICO last week, after the Bloomberg meeting with colleagues in Washington but before he formally decided on an endorsement.
“I don’t think that those are candidates who will win a general election. And I also disagree with them more on policy.”
