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Why Bloomberg and Deval Patrick Changed Their Minds About 2020

Michael Bloomberg has filed paperwork in two states, while Deval Patrick is expected to announce his intentions soon.

After adding his name to the Democratic primary ballot in Arkansas, Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, ate lunch with Frank Scott Jr., the mayor of Little Rock, Ark.Credit...Christopher Aluka Berry/Reuters

It was late summer and the Democratic presidential primary was in flux. Joseph R. Biden Jr. was sinking in national polls and Senator Elizabeth Warren was on the rise. And two men, Michael R. Bloomberg and Deval Patrick, were again thinking quietly about running for president.

They had both ruled out entering the race over the winter. Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, had conducted polling and focus groups and concluded it was not worth challenging a rival as strong as Mr. Biden. Mr. Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, had confronted a family illness — his wife was diagnosed with cancer — and new scrutiny of his business record. He, too, opted out of the race.

But over time, they both developed second thoughts. Critical of Mr. Biden’s campaign, Mr. Bloomberg asked his aides to bring updated polling information gauging his prospects. Mr. Patrick began expressing unease to friends about whether the existing crop of candidates could unite the Democratic Party after the primary, or heal a divided country after the general election.

And both men still harbored an undimmed ambition to be president.

Now, Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Patrick are at the precipice of joining the tumultuous 2020 race, encouraged by a combination of anecdotal angst among voters and party officials, and in Mr. Bloomberg’s case by a trove of public-opinion research.

Both men have concluded in recent weeks that Mr. Biden, the former vice president, is not the imposing adversary they had expected him to be, interviews with aides and allies show. Both also believe there is room in the race for a more dynamic candidate who is closer to the political middle than Mr. Biden’s two most prominent challengers, Ms. Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders.

Should Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Patrick enter the race, they would test that proposition in different ways: Mr. Bloomberg with a powerfully funded campaign that would take on President Trump directly and contest the biggest states on the primary map from the start; Mr. Patrick with an insurgent candidacy that would begin in next-door New Hampshire and run through South Carolina, where black voters are likely to decide the primary.

Advisers to Mr. Bloomberg conducted extensive polling at the national level and in the Super Tuesday states, including in the weeks leading up to his filing paperwork in Alabama last Friday. That data showed a number of shifts in the Democratic electorate since Mr. Bloomberg’s decision to forgo a run in March, people familiar with the polling said: It found Mr. Biden less formidable, and voters even more intently focused on questions of electability. A series of tests, gauging the impact of Mr. Bloomberg’s positive message and potential messages attacking him, yielded encouraging results.

Gary Hart, the former Colorado senator who made a last-minute bid for the Democratic nomination in 1988 after dropping out of the race, said the burden on both Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Patrick would be to articulate a clear rationale for entering a race already overflowing with options.

“They ought to be out in public stating that rationale, and it has to be new and different,” Mr. Hart said. “It can’t be Beto O’Rourke warmed over, it can’t be Cory Booker. I mean, so many different approaches have been tried and haven’t quite gelled.”

While neither man has made a final decision, Mr. Bloomberg has already formally designated himself a candidate in two states with early filing deadlines. Mr. Patrick is expected to announce his intentions this week, and canceled a planned appearance Wednesday at a Colorado conference of socially conscious investors.

Both men conveyed their intentions to Mr. Biden last week, Mr. Patrick in a phone call to the former vice president, and Mr. Bloomberg through an emissary, his longtime aide Kevin Sheekey.

If there is room for someone to break through late, Mr. Hart predicted it would be by coming across to Democratic voters as the candidate uniquely capable of winning the general election.

“The overwhelming fact of this race is defeating the incumbent,” Mr. Hart said. “It’s, ‘Who can beat Trump?’”

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In an interview Tuesday, Hillary Clinton said, “never say never” to whether she would run again this year. Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Patrick both see themselves as the answer to that question, and they may not be alone: Hillary Clinton told the BBC on Thursday that she would “never say never” to running and said she was under “enormous pressure from many, many people to think about it.”

But unlike Mr. Patrick and Mr. Bloomberg, Mrs. Clinton is not taking active steps toward joining the race.

Polls show the Democratic race is fluid, but that voters are largely satisfied with their existing options. While there is no overpowering figure in the race, Mr. Biden still leads most national polls, and voters in the early states have largely gravitated toward a short list of options including him, Ms. Warren of Massachusetts, Mr. Sanders of Vermont, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind.

Mr. Bloomberg, who has flirted with a White House run several times previously, usually as an independent, has already faced withering criticism from several candidates, including Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders, who have derided him as yet another billionaire seeking to buy control of the political system. Mr. Patrick faces questions about whether he will be able to hire a strong campaign staff and raise the money needed to compete in a national election on such short notice.

The two have mapped out divergent strategies: Mr. Patrick is eyeing a relatively conventional path to the nomination through the early states, while Mr. Bloomberg envisions spending a huge sum of money contesting Super Tuesday in early March, leaving the current Democratic field to battle over early states like Iowa and New Hampshire.

Even Mr. Bloomberg’s close advisers acknowledge his intended strategy would be an experiment, with the potential to fizzle if another candidate comes out of the early states with runaway momentum.

Mr. Bloomberg took an incremental step toward mounting that kind of candidacy on Tuesday, flying to Little Rock, Ark., to file paperwork to contest the state’s March primary. He is contemplating a trip to North Carolina, another Super Tuesday state far from the Iowa-New Hampshire circuit, as soon as this week, people close to him said.

Michael John Gray, chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party, met briefly with Mr. Bloomberg in Little Rock and said he had the potential to generate “a lot of buzz” there because few presidential candidates have visited so far.

“You do that by showing up in places where people don’t show up,” Mr. Gray said.

In contrast, Mr. Patrick and his allies have been reaching out to Democrats in the early primary and caucus states. The former governor initially rejected making a White House bid last year, in part because his wife had received a cancer diagnosis, but she has since been given a clean bill of health, according to Massachusetts Democrats.

Mr. Patrick, who has not responded to requests for comment, spent part of Tuesday on the phone with Democratic officials, explaining his thinking about how he could make a last-minute entry into the primary.

Yet longtime Democrats said that if Mr. Patrick had any hopes of getting the nomination, he would need to act quickly and have more than a little luck come his way.

“He’s got to move fast,” said former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, noting that Mr. Patrick is little known in a state he would likely count on because of its large population of black primary voters. Indeed, Mr. Patrick has already missed the filing deadlines in Alabama and Arkansas.

But Mr. Hodges had little difficulty imagining a favorable scenario for Mr. Patrick.

“If Biden doesn’t do well in the first two states, that would clearly create an opportunity for Patrick in South Carolina,” he said, referring to Iowa and New Hampshire.

Mr. Bloomberg’s emerging campaign is still finalizing elements of its strategy, but in addition to skipping the earliest-voting states it is likely to involve running television and digital ads on a national scale and targeting Mr. Trump as an adversary well before the general election.

His polling has found Democratic voters receptive to a message about his biography in business and government. Central to Mr. Bloomberg’s thinking is that he would be able to project his positive message on a vastly greater scale than his opponents’ attacks.

Howard Wolfson, an adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, said the former mayor would present an appealing figure to primary voters who are “increasingly looking for the strongest general election candidate to challenge the president.”

“Electability is key — and we believe that given his unique set of accomplishments in business, government and philanthropy, Mike is that candidate,” Mr. Wolfson said. “We have a great story to tell and the means to make sure everyone hears it.”

Still, even in his own polling Mr. Bloomberg is an underdog: One close ally said his positive message could lift him into third place under the right conditions, according to Mr. Bloomberg’s polling, but that getting into first place would be difficult. For that, Mr. Bloomberg would need to embrace some political gambles, like his Super Tuesday gambit.

For both Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Patrick, there is still the matter of hastily constructing a full-scale operation just a couple of months before voting begins. That task may be easier for Mr. Bloomberg, who already employs a set of full-time advisers and has the wealth to immediately find more.

On Tuesday, Mr. Bloomberg filed his paperwork, then sat down for lunch with the mayor of Little Rock, Frank Scott Jr., at one of the city’s best-known BBQ joints. For some, the setting evoked the challenges faced by another Democrat who entered the primary late and based his campaign in the Arkansas capital — the retired general Wesley Clark, who mounted a short-lived candidacy for the 2004 nomination.

“Having worked for Wes Clark I can tell you, it’s really hard to build this boat on the water,” said Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist.

Alexander Burns is a national political correspondent, covering elections and political power across the country, including Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Before coming to The Times in 2015, he covered the 2012 presidential election for Politico. More about Alexander Burns

Jonathan Martin is a national political correspondent. He has reported on a range of topics, including the 2016 presidential election and several state and congressional races, while also writing for Sports, Food and the Book Review. He is also a CNN political analyst. More about Jonathan Martin

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: Seeing Room to Run, Even in a Bustling Primary Race. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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