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Some campaign staffers working on Michael Bloomberg’s doomed presidential bid only learned he dropped out when they read news reports about his decision a day after his anemic Super Tuesday performance, according to a new report. “I had people texting me saying, ‘Why did I just find out that we dropped out from a New …
Some campaign staffers working on Michael Bloomberg’s doomed presidential bid only learned he dropped out when they read news reports about his decision a day after his anemic Super Tuesday performance, according to a new report.
“I had people texting me saying, ‘Why did I just find out that we dropped out from a New York Times article, or something that we heard on the radio?’” Matthew Jeweler, who was a regional organizing director for Bloomberg, told NPR.
Jeweler was among several ex-Bloomberg aides who vented to NPR about how they were axed after the billionaire businessman folded his White House bid even though he had pledged to keep them working to support the Democratic nominee into November.
Bloomberg initially planned to keep an organization running in battleground states after he announced his departure from the race and endorsed Joe Biden on March 4, according to NPR.
But he reportedly laid off most of his staff and gave $18 million to the Democratic National Committee instead.
“It was a low blow,” Bloomberg field organizer Donna Wood, who was canned on a March 20 conference call, told NPR. “I felt very used and very kicked to the curb, after all that I had given to the campaign in the short time that I did work for it.”
About 80 plaintiffs have joined a proposed class-action lawsuit Wood filed alleging that Bloomberg left legions of axed staffers without an income or health care benefits when his campaign reneged on its promise to maintain their jobs through the general election, NPR reported.
Three other ex-Bloomberg staffers filed a second, similar suit last month saying thousands of people who depended on the campaign’s pledge have been “left to fend for themselves.”
Former staffers in six key states were asked to consider working for the DNC and hundreds are in the committee’s “hiring pipeline,” Bloomberg campaign manager Kevin Sheekey told NPR.
