One day the now defunct presidential campaign of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be nothing more than a piece of political trivia for future generations to ponder.
Late to launch and quick to crash, the Bloomberg campaign won exactly one primary election and piled up just five delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer. The only primary Bloomberg won was not one of our 50 states but one of our most-distant and obscure territories, American Samoa.
The island is located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, somewhere between Hawaii and New Zealand. It’s roughly the land size of Washington, D.C., and it’s home to about 55,000 people.
Of those 55,000 American Samoans, only 351 voted in the Democratic primary. Bloomberg got half of them — 175.
By the time the mayor’s campaign got to Super Tuesday in Pago Pago, he had spent more than half a billion dollars of his own money.
Bloomberg dispatched seven full-time staff members to American Samoa to hit the beaches, spread the gospel and secure a win. He himself never made it to the island, but obviously his seven staffers made quite an impression.
One other fact about Bloomberg’s expensive victory in American Samoa: If he had taken everything he spent on his presidential campaign and instead handed it over to the 175 Samoans who voted for him, each one of them would have become an instant millionaire, with plenty to spare.
Or, he could have built a really nice hospital somewhere for coronavirus victims.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette