Could Uber And Airbnb Have Helped Make President Bloomberg?

The 2016 election season is reaching that point where every story has, more or less, been written already. Almost every candidate has had one or several verbal gaffes scrutinized over the course of one or several news cycles, and viewers who might have found early debates entertaining are now tuning them out just as easily.

What a miracle it is that Michael Bloomberg’s ghost campaign keeps giving political reporters something to break up their Trump-filled days.

But that’s the gift given to Wired by Bradley Tusk, a longtime Bloomberg advisor and would-be righthand man in an imaginary Bloomberg administration. After the former mayor of New York City declared his intention not to run for president (which came after months of not declaring his intention not to run), Tusk told Wired that his group was aware of the sheer logistical hindrances of jumping into a presidential campaign so late in the process — the lack of field offices, an organized volunteer force and access to voting data all make it prohibitively difficult for even established politicians to start now and do well in November.

However, Tusk believed that Bloomberg’s ties to Silicon Valley, Uber, Airbnb and other prototypical companies of the sharing economy would give Bloomberg a way to quickly and reliably spread his message. Picture a political pamphlet stapled to a Chinese food order delivered by DoorDash or canvassers chauffeured around battleground states by a rolling army of Uber drivers.

“Rather than advertising on Craigslist, which is what normally happens, we said: These people are already organized,” Tusk told Wired. “They already exist. There’s a rating in terms of their ability to do well with other people. It would have been really interesting.”

It is, of course, incredibly convenient for Tusk that he refuses to name any of the companies of the sharing economy that would have joined forces with Bloomberg to make a run for the White House, but it’s unlikely that companies outside of the communications and transportation fields would make much of a difference in elections. In fact, Re/code explained that Tusk previously worked with Uber as a political consultant during its expansion into New York City and subsequent regulatory conflicts. Evidently, a little quid pro quo goes a long way in both business and politics.

But it’s just about as unlikely that Bloomberg would have been elected as it is that companies like Uber would support a high-profile politician like him out of the goodness of their API hearts. Indeed, aligning oneself with any political entity can be a dangerous proposition for a business, let alone ones like Airbnb that have made a habit out of rankling local consumers and regulators. So, while tapping into the sharing economy may have helped Bloomberg close the organizational gap between the candidates who started campaigning months ago, how would it have affected the perception of his politics?

To their credit, many companies of the sharing economy have already carved out clear political identities, though these are understandably tied to their business goals. For example, the Orlando Sentinel reported on a series of attack ads funded by Uber targeting Florida State Senate President Andy Gardiner. As an alleged cause of a holdup in a vote that would see taxes and fees imposed on taxis not extended to Uber, Gardiner has been attacked for ties to local livery businesses in direct mail and digital ads. While it’s unclear how much Uber is spending to put the pressure on Florida legislators, The Real Deal explained that Airbnb paid out $337,500 to corporate lobbyists in 2015 — a twofold increase of its political activity budget compared to 2014.

The problem with working with the sharing economy in a political aspect is just this: They’re not afraid to work for their interests, even if it means exacerbating affordable housing crises in NYC, driving down wages for taxi drivers in already poverty-stricken cities across the country or just fighting against elements of regulation that might be good for a community but bad for profits. While the average consumer has accepted the convenience of the sharing economy’s spoils, that doesn’t mean they’d be willing to overlook the damage it’s caused in a political light. In fact, it’s all too easy to see customers’ dissatisfaction with the sharing economy expressed solely through a vote against its interests and its would-be candidate.

Because they sure aren’t going to hand back the convenience the Ubers and the Airbnbs of the world have wrought. They just don’t have to be politically beholden to it.