Bloomberg campaign manager says they have considered naming running mate during primaries

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign manager said Thursday that the campaign has considered naming a running mate with the primaries still underway.

“One way that Mayor Bloomberg could show that he wants to bring the party together or be more representative of all the factions in it would be to announce a potential VP. … Why not do that now?” MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle asked Kevin Sheekey Thursday morning. “Because a lot of people say, ‘Mayor Bloomberg, he’s not even a Democrat.’”

“We’ve thought about it,” Sheekey replied, “I think the other campaigns have thought about it too. I think it gets to my earlier point, which is that we do need to figure out how to consolidate different factions of this party. We need to figure out how to bring people together.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) announced former Hewlett-Packard CEO and ex-Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina as his running mate late in his 2016 GOP primary, about a week before suspending his campaign following a loss in the Indiana primary.

The Drudge Report alleged earlier this year that Bloomberg has considered asking former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to serve as his running mate, but the campaign would not comment on the report, and Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, said she would not accept such an offer.

MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle also asked Sheekey if recent developments in former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign, including his performance in Tuesday night’s debate and his securing of the coveted endorsement from House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), had prompted Bloomberg to rethink his calculation in entering the race for fear Biden would lose to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Sheekey disagreed with Ruhle’s assessment, noting that Biden had yet to win any primaries or caucuses and that while most polling shows him ahead in South Carolina, the primary “hasn’t happened yet” and “he was winning by 35 points a month ago and now quite frankly the question is whether he will win at all.”

“I do think Super Tuesday is going to be completely definitional in this race,” Sheekey added. Bloomberg is not competing in any of the first four nominating contests and will officially enter the race for the Super Tuesday primaries.