Michael Bloomberg appears in The Bob Zadek Show not as a guest or as the subject of an episode but as a recurring illustration — twice invoked, in different episodes and by different speakers, to make two unrelated arguments. In the 2009 episode on drug legalization, Bob Zadek names him as the “male nanny” of New York for seeking to make trans fats illegal to serve in restaurants. In the 2020 episode on whether the winner of the presidential election would be known by November 4, Peter Wallison names him as an example of a wealthy person who could run his own campaign for president in a system without the Electoral College. The excerpts supply no biography, no account of his business career, no discussion of his mayoralty as such, and no interview with him.
The nanny state and the trans fat ban
In the 2009 episode devoted to the legalization of drugs, Bob Zadek raises the trans fat ban as the concrete case that exposes what he treats as the central error of paternalist legislation. He states that Mayor Bloomberg in New York is now making trans fats illegal to sell in restaurants in New York City, and calls him “ever the nanny, the male nanny,” for seeking to make trans fats illegal to serve in restaurants Legalize drugs. (2009).
The point Zadek draws from the example is not about trans fats themselves. He says explicitly that whether trans fats are bad or not bad for you is absolutely besides the point, and that the question is whether government has to butt into your lives, become intrusive, and not only educate you that something is bad for you, but prohibit you from doing things that are bad for you. He asks how that can be the standard, and answers with the harm principle: people should be allowed to engage in any behavior they wish, so long as that behavior does not materially harm somebody else Legalize drugs. (2009).
Within the same argument Zadek extends the principle to the objection that drug users drive dangerously, replying that people drive when they are tired and that nobody proposes making being tired a felony; he invokes the image of a swinging fist, whose right stops where somebody else’s nose starts, and concludes that the fact that something is bad for you is not grounds to make it illegal Legalize drugs. (2009). Bloomberg’s ban functions in the episode as the example that makes the general claim concrete: a harm-to-self justification, carried into law by a mayor, for a substance rather than a drug.
The Electoral College and self-financed candidates
Eleven years later, in the 2020 episode on the timing of the presidential result, Bloomberg surfaces in a different speaker’s argument and a different register. Peter Wallison, arguing that the Electoral College is the reason the United States has two political parties, predicts that eliminating it would produce ten or twelve parties — a Right to Life party, a Choice party, an anti-immigrant party, a pro-immigrant party, a pro-gun and an anti-gun party Will We Know Who the President Is on November 4? (2020).
To that list of factional parties Wallison adds a second category of candidate: very wealthy people, “like say Michael Bloomberg,” who can run their own campaigns because they have so much money. In Wallison’s forecast, elections without the Electoral College would feature ten or twelve candidates, with the winner probably taking about 20% of the vote — which he argues is worse than the less-than-50% outcomes the Electoral College has produced, and would leave the winner unable to speak for the American people Will We Know Who the President Is on November 4? (2020).
The Bloomberg reference here is illustrative rather than analytical. Wallison does not discuss Bloomberg’s politics, his wealth in figures, or any campaign he ran; Bloomberg serves as a recognizable name for the type of self-financing candidate Wallison expects a multi-party system to produce. The argument belongs to Wallison, not to Zadek, who in this exchange is the one asking Wallison to lay out the case for and against the Electoral College.
Across episodes: no development
The two episodes do not argue the same question about Bloomberg and show no development: the 2009 episode uses him as an example of municipal paternalism in a discussion of drug legalization, and the 2020 episode uses him as an example of a self-financing candidate in a discussion of the Electoral College, with no overlap in argument, no change in treatment, and no speaker addressing both.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts contain no interview with Bloomberg and no extended discussion of him by any guest. They do not state his title beyond Zadek’s reference to him as Mayor Bloomberg in New York, give no dates for his tenure, describe no business or philanthropic activity, and name no policy of his other than the trans fat ban. Nothing in the excerpts indicates that he was ever a guest on the program, and no excerpt addresses his own campaigns for office beyond Wallison’s hypothetical use of his name.