Michael Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is an American politician, businessman, and author. He is the co-founder, CEO, and majority owner of Bloomberg L.P. Bloomberg was the mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013. He was a candidate in the Democratic Party primaries for the 2020 United States presidential election.

Bloomberg was a life-long Democrat until 2001, when he switched to the Republican Party before running for mayor. He became independent in 2007, and registered again as a Democrat in October 2018.

In 2004, he endorsed the re-election of George W. Bush, and spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention. In 2012, he endorsed the re-election of President Barack Obama. Bloomberg endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, and spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. When he dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, he endorsed the eventual nominee, Joe Biden. Bloomberg's political stances can be defined as technocratic.

In April 2006, along with Boston mayor Thomas Menino, Bloomberg co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns. A December 2013 press release by the group said the bipartisan coalition included over 1,000 mayors. In 2014, the organization merged with Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America to form Everytown for Gun Safety, which in 2018 in collaboration with student groups organized the March For Our Lives. When asked in an April 2014 interview why he was devoting so many of his personal resources to supporting gun control, restrictive food choice, and smoking cessation, his concern was about his mortality, replying: "I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven, I'm not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It's not even close."

As mayor, Bloomberg increased the mandatory minimum sentence for illegal possession of a loaded handgun, saying: "Illegal guns don't belong on our streets, and we're sending that message loud and clear. We're determined to see that gun dealers who break the law are held accountable, and that criminals who carry illegal loaded guns serve serious time behind bars." He opposes the death penalty, saying he would "rather lock somebody up and throw away the key and put them in hard labor". He has called the death penalty "murder by the state".

Bloomberg was a staunch proponent of stop-and-frisk in New York City, and has argued that it lowered the murder rate. The manner in which the NYPD utilized the practice was ruled unconstitutional in 2013, but the practice itself was not deemed unconstitutional. There is no evidence that the practice reduced the crime rate. New York City did not see an increase in violent or property crime following the end of stop-and-frisk, and in fact experienced lower murder rates after the policy was scaled back in 2013.

In June 2013, Bloomberg pushed back against accusations that the stop-and-frisk practice disproportionately targeted minorities. Bloomberg argued that the demographic data of police stops should be assessed based on suspects' descriptions and not the population as a whole, saying, "it's not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the [crime]. In that case, incidentally, I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little."

In 2015, Bloomberg defended New York City's stop-and-frisk practices, saying: