Bloomberg Seeks to Move Past ‘Stop and

Frisk’ Controversy
By Mark Niquette

February 13, 2020, 7:24 AM GMT+8

Updated on February 14, 2020, 1:16 AM GMT+8

 Former New York mayor says comments don’t reflect how he lives
 Sanders surrogate Ocasio-Cortez says policy hurt her family

Michael Bloomberg Photographer: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

LISTEN TO ARTICLE 5:08

Michael Bloomberg sought Wednesday to move past a controversy about

comments he made in 2015 that crime in minority communities justified stop-
and-frisk policing when he was New York mayor. He predicted black voters
will still support him.

“Those words don’t reflect the way that I’ve governed, or the way that I run my
company or the way that I live,” Bloomberg told reporters after a campaign stop
Wednesday in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He said he was re-elected twice in one
of the most diverse U.S. cities. “I think we’re going to do very well in the
African-American community.”
An audio from 2015 surfaced on Monday in which Bloomberg defended his
stop-and-frisk policing policy. In clips of a speech given at the Aspen Institute,
Bloomberg says the best way to reduce gun violence among minorities was to
“throw them up against the wall and frisk them.”

That prompted another round of apologies by Bloomberg, who has said the
policy lowered the city’s murder rate. He now says he came to decide late in his
final term as mayor the policy wasn’t effective and should have ended it sooner,
and that he thinks voters will be able to look at his broader record on issues
affecting minorities.

A federal court ruled in 2013 the policy was unconstitutional.

(Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent
company of Bloomberg News).

Hours after the audio was posted on Twitter, his campaign held a conference
call with the Black Economic Alliance, which garnered an apology from
Bloomberg, and a meeting with 20 African-American faith leaders who backed
him.

On Wednesday, his campaign announced endorsements by three members of

the Congressional Black Caucus: Representative Gregory Meeks of New York,
who was named a co-chairman of Bloomberg’s Black America National
Leadership Council; Representative Lucy McBath of Georgia, who became a
gun-control activist after her 17 year-old son was shot and killed in 2012; and
Representative Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

On Thursday, the campaign released a new television ad touting Bloomberg’s

support for black-owned businesses. It features Cheryl McKissack, president
and chief executive of the design and construction firm McKissack and
McKissack who said the former New York mayor “leveled the playing field”
with contracts for black-owned companies.

But New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has campaigned

for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, criticized Bloomberg’s record as
mayor and said Democrats would be making a mistake by supporting him for
the party’s presidential nomination.

“I think quite a few things happened under him as mayor,” she told reporters at
the Capitol. “Frankly, we all know ‘stop and frisk’ -- that was my family, and
that was my community, and that was my neighborhood, and we know this was
a policy that decimated a lot of families.”
Ocasio-Cortez said his apologies weren’t enough. “So, are those folks going to
get their records expunged with a tweet? They’re not,” she said.

The Bloomberg campaign declined to comment on Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks.

But Bloomberg faced a friendly crowd in Chattanooga.

“I know what racism looks like,” Elenora Woods, president of the Chattanooga
NAACP said in introducing him at a campaign stop there. “I know what it looks
like, and that’s not Mike Bloomberg.”

While his Democratic rivals are now turning their attention to the next two
contests in Nevada and South Carolina, Bloomberg is holding rallies with the
start of early voting in Tennessee on Wednesday and in North Carolina on
Thursday, two states that vote on Super Tuesday, March 3. Bloomberg is
skipping the contests in February to focus on the races in March, when more
than 60% of the pledged delegates needed for the Democratic nomination will
be awarded.

There was an overflow crowd at the Bessie Smith Cultural Center where he
spoke in Chattanooga, and Bloomberg addressed about 400 people outside. He
even acknowledged the handful of protesters with signs such as, “My vote is not
for sale.” A protester also jumped on stage inside before Bloomberg spoke
complaining about a “plutocracy,” apparently referring to Bloomberg self-
financing his campaign, before being escorted off.

Bloomberg obliquely referred to Sanders, who won the New Hampshire

primary Tuesday.

“We don’t need a revolution. We want evolution, and we need a nominee who
can deliver it,” he said. He also referred indirectly to Sanders’ Medicare for All
plan by saying he would achieve universal health care coverage “without a
massive tax hike on the middle class and without forcing people to give up their
private insurance.”

Speaking to reporters afterward, Bloomberg refused to answer questions about

the rest of the Democratic race, including low-polling candidates who are
staying in.

“If they want to stay in they should stay in,” Bloomberg said. “I’m not here to
tell anybody what to do.”

Bloomberg has been rising in polls where he places third nationally in the
RealClearPolitics average of recent national polls, at 14.2%, behind Sanders at
23.6% and Joe Biden at 19.2%. Polls suggest Bloomberg is pulling support that
previously went to Biden, including among black voters.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Monday before the audio tape surfaced
showed that Bloomberg’s support among black voters jumped 15 percentage
points since an earlier poll on Jan. 28, from 7% to 22%. Biden’s once-
overwhelming advantage among the same voter pool dropped from 49% to
27%.

— With assistance by Billy House