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What Happened When I Tried to Find Someone Who Bought a Bloomberg T-Shirt
Who is buying and wearing T-shirts for the late-entering moderate billionaire candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination?
Something curious happens when you visit the official campaign website of Mike Bloomberg: There’s no direct donation button! (Probably because he is a billionaire.) But, if you’re an ardent supporter of the former New York City mayor, you can still support him by purchasing some of his ton of merch, including T-shirts with the slogan “Facts over fiction,” “In God we trust, everyone else bring data,” and, “I like Mike.”
In 2016, the infamous, bright red “Make America Great Again” hat became a sort of Rorschach test for voters — do you see power, hate, or something else entirely? — and since then political merch has morphed into a way to project not only which candidate you support but who you are.
Bloomberg announced his presidential bid less than a month ago. In the days since, I have scoured social media to find voters who boasted about buying a Bloomberg T-shirt. Searching for combinations of terms on Twitter (such as “bloomberg tshirt bought,” “bloomberg shirt bought,” “bloomberg shirt i,” and many more) were pretty much unsuccessful. Instagram was even worse. No matter how many hashtag variations I used — #Bloomberg2020, #BloombergForPresident, #ILikeMike — I could not find anyone with a public profile who had shared a picture sporting a Bloomberg 2020 shirt.
Feeling like a failure and with a deadline breathing over my neck, I did the next best thing: I reached out to the campaign and asked if they could connect me with a supporter who had purchased one of these damn shirts. Bloomberg’s press team quickly said the would look into it. But 24 hours later, I hit another wall.
“Hi — So sorry but afraid I don’t have those insights!” a very nice spokesperson who was probably weirded out by my request replied.
Finally, through Twitter, I was able to locate one Wesley Lewis, a 29-year-old from Athens, Georgia, who purchased an “I like Mike” shirt, which he says reflects his identity as a moderate voter — and appealed to him as a collector of political…
