Democratic presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks to supporters at a campaign office, Monday, Jan. 27, 2020, in Scarborough, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Bloomberg has said he is willing to spend upward of $1 billion of his own money on his campaign, which would break the all-time record for money spent by a presidential campaign. The current mark is the $760,370,195.37 spent by the 2008 Barack Obama campaign. Trump’s campaign spent just $343 million on his campaign in 2016.

The high-dollar campaign strategy has earned him criticism from some of his competitors for the Democratic nomination, as critics claim he is trying to buy his way to the White House.

4. Previous comments have roiled his campaign

Bloomberg has caught heat from fellow Democratic contenders and the right side of the aisle for a variety of previous comments that have resurfaced now that he is running for president.

The former mayor was panned for 2008 comments, first reported by The Associated Press, in which he said ending the «redlining,» the banking practice of refusing to loan money to people in minority neighborhoods, helped cause the 2008 financial crisis. Additionally, he had to defend himself over comments from 2015 defending a «stop-and-frisk» policy used while he was New York’s mayor that critics called racist.

And in 2016, Bloomberg made belittling comments about farmers and factory workers, saying they didn’t have enough «gray matter» to work in the information economy.

5. His news company is banned from Trump events

Bloomberg’s tremendous wealth includes a media empire with its arms in television, digital, radio and print. Bloomberg News announced in November that while its owner was running for president, it would continue its policy of not investigating Bloomberg and would extend the same courtesy to Democratic candidates.