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Clinton, Bloomberg promote data project
By MAGGIE HABERMAN 12/15/2014 02:57 PM EST Updated 12/15/2014 03:39 PM EST
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Hillary Clinton appeared at a philanthropic event Monday with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the self-made billionaire who is on friendly terms with Jeb Bush, a potential presidential rival to Clinton in 2016.
The gathering focused on data2x, a joint venture involving the Clinton Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the United Nations Foundation. The project aims to improve the tracking of data about women and girls around the globe.
“You can’t understand what the problem is if you don’t have a good grasp of what the facts and figures are,” said Clinton, whose foundation’s No Ceilings project focuses on “full participation” of women and girls in society.
Clinton and Bloomberg worked together when she was New York state’s junior senator and he was New York City’s mayor, primarily on health issues after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Jeb Bush, a Republican former governor of Florida, serves on the board of Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Neither Bush, nor Clinton have formally announced a 2016 run, but Bush has taken recent steps that indicate he is likely to do so, including saying he will soon release some 250,000 emails from his time as governor.
For Clinton, efforts involving advancing women and girls are her life’s work. For Bloomberg, data of all kinds has long been a focus, but issues of women’s equality, more broadly, have been less so.
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Bloomberg, in his own remarks, occasionally sounded awestruck. He praised Clinton as a strong leader and said his own parents never would have believed he would be on a first-name basis with the former first lady and her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
Bloomberg is an independent, though he was a lifelong Democrat before becoming a Republican for his first mayoral bid in 2001. Although an endorsement from Bloomberg is not necessarily appealing in a primary election, he has cache in the business community and could be an influential surrogate as a supporter in a general election.
In 2012, the billionaire business leader offered a late endorsement to President Barack Obama over Mitt Romney, a successful Republican businessman.
Clinton left before the event was over Monday, just as her daughter, Chelsea, was beginning to moderate a panel. She did not comment on issues dominating headlines, including the fight in the Senate, led among Democrats by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), over a massive spending bill that included a provision favored by major banks. |