Tacoma mayor errs by endorsing Bloomberg for US president

An open letter to the mayor of Tacoma:

Dear Mayor Woodards,

As engaged Tacoma residents, we need to be open with you: We are both confused and dismayed by your use of your office to endorse Mike Bloomberg for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

We want to take pains first to stress that we generally think you’re doing a good job as mayor. We’ve appreciated your engagement and availability, and we’ve genuinely enjoyed our personal interactions with you.

With that context, this situation with Bloomberg feels puzzling.

Tacoma is a gritty city. Though we’re modernizing, and tech-sector jobs have begun to replace skilled trades and union jobs, we’re still proudly working-class and blue-collar. In marked contrast to that, Mike Bloomberg is a billionaire buying his way to national power.

Instead of putting in work in the Democratic primary and building his support in the grassroots, Bloomberg has purchased the ability to sidestep political and personal scrutiny. He’s bought an army of workers and influencers in order to feign popularity.

He’s been saturating local television markets with self-funded ads – many of them misleading, if not outright misrepresentations of his record – in an effort to establish credibility outside of our typical political process.

We haven’t seen adequate justification from you yet for your endorsement; merely generalized nods to Bloomberg’s experience and commitment and theoretical electability. And, let’s be clear: At this point, no one has any idea how Bloomberg will hold up in a Trump-era political context.

Bloomberg’s confusing and seemingly opportunistic transition from Republican to independent to Democrat, his support of racist policing and housing policy, his anti-worker actions as mayor of New York City, and his disturbing and well-documented history of sexual harassment and discrimination have only barely begun to be vetted on the national stage.

Any one of these issues on its own would pose a serious electability problem; Bloomberg has a bunch of them. He’s a deeply problematic candidate. If his performance in Wednesday’s Nevada debate is any indication, Bloomberg’s discomfort with and inability to compellingly defend his own past will be disastrous in a general election against Donald Trump.

Our country has an unhealthy fascination with the idea that impossibly wealthy men can be savior figures, and it needs to end. We already have one of these in office, and he is dangerously out of touch with reality.

By endorsing Bloomberg, you add fuel to the idea that Democrats are dissatisfied with the other candidates in the race. Nothing could be further from the truth, as evidenced locally by the hundreds of thousands of dollars that regular working-class Tacomans have contributed to other candidates.

Further, an endorsement of Bloomberg endorses the idea that power can be purchased – that doing the work of democracy doesn’t matter. Tacomans deserve someone who will represent ordinary people like us – not a different flavor of oligarch.

We would very much like to hear you explain to your city, publicly, the precise ways in which, as mayor of a working-class community, you feel that a billionaire like Mike Bloomberg best represents Grit City. We think we deserve to know. Thank you.

Tobias Nitzsche is a community activist and board member of the Tacoma Central Neighborhood Council. Jamie Hill is a record producer, artist and community organizer who lives and works in Central Tacoma.

This story was originally published February 20, 2020 at 3:00 PM.