FLORENCE, SC (BBN) —  San Francisco-based hedge fund giant Tom Steyer and New York’s media mogul Michael R. Bloomberg and hedge fund giant Tom Steyer are pouring some of their billions into urban America and African-American owned businesses in their quest to win the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary this July in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

 

[Columbia,South Carolina Mayor and former President of the United States Conference of Mayors, Steve Benjamin speaks to Capitol Intelligence/BBN using CI Glass on Tom Steyer investing in Black publishers and minority owned businesses and his endorsement of former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg for president at the US Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting in Washington, DC, January 24, 2020]

Columbia, South Carolina Mayor Steve Benjamin says he applauds Tom Steyer’s personal commitment to invest in Black American businesses notwithstanding the former president of the US Conference of Mayors is backing Mike Bloomberg and is the USD 34bn tycoon’s national campaign co-chair.

The South Carolina primary — with its mostly African American voter base — beats out both Iowa and New Hampshire in determining the viability of any democratic presidential candidate.  Since the 2008 election of Barack Obama, the Black vote and relevant turnout has determined every presidential election including Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Bloomberg LP founder and owner Michael Bloomberg has amassed between USD 5bn to USD 10bn political war chest for a 2020 run for President from an undisclosed securization of Bloomberg terminals and has already spent USD 251m of his own money for his presidential campaign.

[Former NYC Mayor and Bloomberg LP owner Michael Bloomberg speaks to Capitol Intelligence/BBN using CI Glass on Trump administration Antitrust action and USD 5bn Bloomberg terminal securitization at The Atlantic City Lab Baltimore event in Baltimore. August 2, 2017]

Speaking in an interview with Capitol Intelligence Group/BBN at a City Lab event with Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh prior to her resignation on corruption charges, Bloomberg denied he raised between USD 5bn to USD 10bn though the securitization of Bloomberg terminals more than a decade ago.

Bloomberg jump started his presidential campaign by bankrolling through his non-for-profit Bloomberg Philanthropies a series of ad hoc events organized by Washington, DC-based The Atlantic media group owned by Laurene Powell Jobs (the widow of former Apple Inc. chairman and CEO Steve Jobs) in key democratic strongholds such Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans and Los Angeles.

Bloomberg is fully aware he is starting out with sentiments of deep antipathy from the Black American community stemming from instituting widely criticized “Stop and Frisk” police searches and ignoring the concerns of African-American residents while mayor of New York.

Bloomberg also faces serious charges of misogyny against female staffers among Bloomberg LLP’s 20,000 employees and his aggressive enforcement of punitive Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) with current and former Bloomberg employees. In fact, Bloomberg made the highly unusual executive edict barring Bloomberg journalists from any investigative journalism regarding his campaign.

Bloomberg will also face accusations he has little regards for Constitutional limits after side-stepping New York City’s two-term limits to win himself unprecedented third term as mayor. Boca Raton, Florida Mayor Scott Singer calculated that Bloomberg would spend up to USD 10bn for his presidential run if he matched the USD 130 per voter he paid out for his third term as NYC mayor.

[2020 Democratic presidential and hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer speaks to Capitol Intelligence/BBN using CI Glass at the SCDP’s Blue Jamboree caucus in North Charleston, South Carolina. October 5, 2019]

While Bloomberg is skipping South Carolina’s February 29 primary, billionaire hedge fund manager Tom Steyer is utilizing his “time is money” attitude of a hedge fund principal to win over votes by placing ads in local minority owned newspapers and hiring African American companies.  The effort has succeeded in a spectacular manner — Tom Steyer is now number two behind front runner Joe Biden and could well hand the vice president a crushing defeat in the all important primary that measures Black American support for democratic candidates.

Steyer’s rise in South Carolina came as the South Carolina Democratic Party (SCDP) entered into a civil war between the mainly white party leadership and African-American residents and after South Bend, Indiana mayor, Pete Buttigieg — managed to offend black publishers by offering a measly USD 15,000 in advertising spend and subsequently accused the black media owners of “extortion” when they rightly complained.

To his credit, Steyer personally met and commanded a significant six figure ad spend with South Carolina’s African-American newspapers such as Larry D. Smith‘s The Community Times of Florence, SC and the Times Upstate of Greenville/Spartanburg; Damion and Tolbert Smalls‘ Charleston Chronicle of Charleston, SC.; Nate Abraham, Jr‘ Carolina Panorama and Mike Bailey‘s online portal The Minority Eye of Columbia, South Carolina.

The simple move of advertising in black newspapers that are distributed to churches every Sunday not only helped propel Steyer to number two on the ballot but won the hedge fund billionaire the endorsement of the SCDP Black Caucus Chairman, Johnnie Cordero.

[Democratic Presidential Candidate Tom Steyer filmed by Capitol Intelligence/The Community Times using CI Glass winning the endorsement of South Carolina Democratic Party Black Caucus Chairman Johnnie Cordero at Seminar Brewing in Florence South Carolina and Steyer campaign Black Men Round Table in Sumter, South Carolina on January 18, 2020.]

Cordero’s backing Steyer over Biden, Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg illustrates just how far the democratic party has gone to lose its appeal and support of the African-American community since the election of Barack Obama in 2008.

Biden was segregationist Senator from Delaware that opposed school busing and supported President Bill Clinton draconian imprisonment of first time offenders; Sanders viewed Black Americans as revolutionary cannon fodder when he was a trotskyite Socialist Worker militant as student at the University of Chicago while Massachusetts US Senator Elizabeth Warren stands accused of profiting from a home mortgage foreclosure for personal gain.

Under the radar, President Donald Trump is gaining serious support from the community for passing a wide-ranging justice reform bill, allowing billions of dollars of profits to be re-invested in African American communities through the Opportunity Zones tax credit program and new federal dollars and resources for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

The man everyone has to thanks for Trump’s positive moves to help the Black community is no other than Charleston native son, Republican and slave descendant, US Senator Tim Scott (R-SC.).

In fact, Steyer and Bloomberg’s investment into the Black community have top RNC campaign workers worried that Trump’s 2020 re-election may not be the “cake walk” they expect with Biden, Warren or Sanders as the democratic nominee.

“Bloomberg is the candidate we really need to worry about,” said Bruce Levell, the Atlantia-based head of the National Diversity Coalition for Trump. 

Steyer’s investment into the black community was not cynical political ploy.  Steyer and his wife Kat Taylor personally went out of their way to hire African-American businesses and vendors to run their campaign such as Charleston’s Elite Event Planning founder and CEO Terrence Freeman of Johns Island, SC.

Terrence Freeman, who won a contract to be Tom Steyer’s campaign logistic and event manager for the Charleston area, is an example of Steyer’s utlizing the skills that allowed him to found and create Farrallon Capital Management LLC hedge fund of San Francisco with over USD 27bn dollars under management.

[Charleston’s Elite Event Planning founder and CEO Terrence Freeman speaks to Capitol Intelligence/Charleston Chronicle using CI Glass on Envolve award, Tom Steyer for President, Returning Citizens at company HQ in Moncks Corner in South Carolina. January 19, 2020]

Freeman’s event and catering business is jumping from success to success after winning the prestigious Envolve Award for being one of America’s best entrepreneurs last November 2019.    Freeman also managed to win the attention of America’s first African-American woman billionaire, Black Entertainment and Television (BET) co-founder and CEO and owner of Salamander Hotels and Resorts‘ Sheila Johnson on her visit to Charleston, SC to make a speech on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr at the Charleston YMCA. 

Not only is Freeman building up his core event and catering business but he is on the cusp of achieving a life-long dream of transforming his family farm on Johns Island into culinary training center for returning citizens and affordable housing for employees working at the millionaire enclave of Kiawah Island on his native Johns Island.

Freeman is bidding for a food concession at the Charleston International Airport from the Jacobs family of the Buffalo, New York-based Delaware North airport and highway concession operator and is well on his way to becoming an American food group on the lines of Vienna, Austria based  Do & Co.

Steyer’s jump to number two in South Carolina was not due to his cash spend (circa USD 30m) but the personal and sincere interest of Steyer and his wife Kat Taylor in personally giving African-American entrepreneurs such as Freeman a helping hand and bridging the wide opportunity gap between African-American business owners and their white peers.

AOL co-founder and Revolution Growth co-Chairman Steve Case notes that 75 pct of all VC investments are made in San Francisco, NYC and Boston and only 1 pct is invested in African-American owned companies.

Steyer efforts, by highlighting the real 10x to 20x return on investing in black businesses, is also helping to permanently bridge the unjust and illogical economic divide between black and white Carolinians America’s fast growing economy.

In fact it is a woman of color — former South Carolina Governor and Kiawah resident Nikki Haley — who brought the new economic prosperity to South Carolina by cajoling the likes of European major manufacturers such as Munich-based Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (Spartanburg);  Stuttgart-based Daimler AG (North Charleston); Milan, Italy-based Prysmian Group (Columbia); Hanover-based Continental AG (Sumter); Clermont-Ferrand, France-based Michelin (Greenville) and China’s Volvo (Ridgeville) to base or greatly expand their operations in South Carolina.

[Daimler AG Chairman of the Board of Management Ola Kallenius speaks to Capitol Intelligence/The Community Times of Florence, South Carolina using CI Glass following interview with The Carlyle Group co-Founder and co-Chairman David Rubenstein at the Economic Club of Washington, DC January 10, 2020]

It is only people like johns Island Terrence Freeman who can build a bridge between the likes of Daimler CEO Ola Kallenius and BMW owner Susanne Klatten and the notable Kiawah residents such as current General Electric (NYSE: GE) CEO Eric Culp and former GE CEO Jeff Immelt with emerging African-American owned business leaders such as Rainwater‘s Darla Moore, BET co-founder Sheila Johnson and Urban One [NASDAQ: UONEK] founder Cathy Hughes.

By PK Semler in Florence, Columbia, Sumter and Charleston in South Carolina and Washington, DC. For information please call +1-202-549-3399 or email pks@capitolintelgroup.com.

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