During an interview this week on The Hill TV’s show “The Rising,” a senior adviser to Bernie Sanders, Chuck Rocha, said the campaign recently lost a staffer in South Carolina to Bloomberg.
“I’ve heard it in every state that we’ve been in,” said Rocha of the Bloomberg effect, adding that one staffer recently came to him and said, “‘Hey Chuck, I’m with Bernie, I’m gonna vote for Bernie, but I’m gonna go get this money, cuz he’s gonna double my salary and pay me till November and I’ve gotta pay my bills when this thing is over.’ And I was like, ‘Look brother, go do what you’ve gotta do. Out of respect, we’d still like your vote, and ask your mommy and daddy if they’ll vote for Bernie as well,’ and he goes, ‘Oh, no problem.’ That’s a real thing.”
The salaries being paid to Bloomberg staffers are well above market rates, and often come with housing included, as well as a laptop and an iPhone. One operative lured to Bloomberg’s office in New York said she observed a seemingly endless wall of iPhones stacked like bricks as far as she could see. Another said that Bloomberg offered a job to one operative who didn’t take it, but still received a laptop and iPhone from the campaign in the mail anyway, presumably by sheer dint of onboarding momentum. One progressive consultant in Arizona has lost multiple hires to Bloomberg and is having a hard time finding workers. “I have heard of new organizers being hired by Bloomberg and then saying they are secretly still knocking for Bernie,” the consultant said.
The Bloomberg campaign is offering field organizers, or FOs) $6,000 per month and guaranteed pay through November, and many have realized that if they demand more, they will likely get it, according to hiring managers. A typical salary for that position at the state or federal level might be $3,000 to $4,000, and multiple operatives in charge of hiring FOs say they’ve never had a harder time recruiting, and applicants are making extreme demands. Regional organizing directors are being offered $8,000 a month to start, significantly more than typical campaigns.
https://theintercept.com/2020/02/13/bloomberg-spending-local-state-campaigns/
