Billionaire Mike Bloomberg said his campaign has “achieved something no one else thought was possible” after winning his first Democratic primary delegates — in the territory of American Samoa.
The victory gave the former mayor of New York, who has spent more than half a billion dollars of his own money in his bid for the nomination, his first delegates of the primary race.
"No matter how many we win tonight, we have done something no one else thought was possible," he said, touting his rise from “one percent in the polls to being a contender for the Democratic nomination for president."
But even as he celebrated his first delegates on Super Tuesday, the key states targeted by Bloomberg’s campaign provided less than hopeful results.
Despite spending more than $17 million on television advertising alone in North Carolina, and building a significant ground game, Bloomberg is projected to finish third in the state behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
One campaign aide blamed the former mayor’s poor performance in his debut debate in Las Vegas last month.
"This isn’t going as planned," a campaign adviser told CNN’s Jeff Zeleny. "Things changed after Las Vegas debate and never recovered."
In Virginia, too, the signs were bad. Bloomberg has a long history of spending heavily in Virginia politics, giving millions to help elect Democratic candidates over the years. His campaign has flooded the airwaves with television commercials in the past few months, and he has visited some seven times.
But that effort has shown little reward so far, with polling currently placing him in fourth place with 9.5 percent.
Despite the disappointing early results, campaign manager Kevin Sheekey told reporters that Bloomberg was “absolutely” not dropping out.
Bloomberg’s spending has dwarfed that of his rivals, a strategy that is credited with propelling him in the polls from around 5 percent in November to around 15 percent today.
