Presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg is pouring tens of millions of dollars from his vast personal fortune into his campaign. A piece of it is going to an unknown digital business called Hawkfish — which Bloomberg himself founded during the spring.
Hawkfish will be the “primary digital agency and technology services provider for the campaign,” Julie Wood, a Bloomberg campaign spokeswoman, told CNBC. She added that the firm “is now providing digital ad services, including content creation, ad placement and analytics” for their campaign. It will also help Democratic races across the country in future election cycles, she said.
The company’s existence has not been previously reported. Bloomberg’s campaign disclosed details about the company after CNBC pressed the campaign about its recent hiring spree.
Bloomberg, a billionaire former three-term mayor of New York, started building the company early in 2019, before he decided to seek the Democratic presidential nomination, the campaign aide said. While the campaign declined to say how much Bloomberg has invested in the company, Bloomberg has said he will spend over $100 million on anti-Trump digital ads. His campaign has already spent at least $13 million on Facebook and Google spots.
Bloomberg, who was dedicated to denying President Donald Trump a second term before he entered the Democratic race, built Hawkfish with the intention of overpowering the formidable data operation assembled by the Republican National Committee and Trump’s cash-flush campaign.
Hawkfish appears to have been assembled in secret. It has no public website. A search of elections databases turned up no financial records connected to work for other Democratic causes.
While it is unusual for a presidential candidate to turn to a company he founded for assistance, ethics experts say Bloomberg’s move does not break Federal Election Commission laws.
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