Judy Sheindlin, more commonly known as Judge Judy revealed earlier in October that she is supporting former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for president, even though he has yet to formally enter the presidential race.
“I realize I am taking a personal and a career risk in making such a statement. I have carefully stayed away from politics for 50 years, except to vote,” Sheindlin wrote in an op-ed for USA Today. “But times have changed in our country, and I believe the moment has come for me to step out from behind the curtain. I want to speak honestly and from the heart — regardless of the consequences.”
Sheindlin, who holds the title of the highest-paid personality on television, explained that she was asked about her views on the upcoming presidential election while she was speaking at the Cambridge Union in England.
“I didn’t mince words. I said our American family has been fractured in recent years. We’re hopelessly divided, and a bitterly divided family cannot thrive,” she explained. “The only way we can begin to come together again, I said, is if Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, becomes our next president.”
Over the past decade, Bloomberg has been repeatedly floated as a potential candidate to represent the centrist lane of the Democratic party. He was notably a Democrat for the majority of his adult life before switching to the Republican Party in 2001 before his term as mayor began. However, midway through his term, he again changed his party affiliation to Independent before rejoining the Democratic Party in 2018.
The former New York mayor was enmeshed in speculation about launching a bid for the presidency in 2008, 2012, and 2016. After Bloomberg announced that he was contributing at least $80 million to Democratic candidates during the 2018 congressional elections and subsequently registered as a Democrat, rumors of his impending entry into the 2020 presidential race again began swirling.
Bloomberg announced in March 2019 that he would not be launching a bid for the presidency, and instead urged Americans to “nominate a Democrat who will be in the strongest position to defeat Donald Trump.” However, only days before Sheindlin publicly endorsed Bloomberg, he revealed that he was still mulling over a bid, contingent on former Vice President Joe Biden dropping out of the race.
“I realize Michael Bloomberg said in March that he will not run for president in 2020 … I respect his comment — but our political landscape has changed profoundly since he made it,” Sheindlin said. “There is ferment on the left and the right, candidacies are rising and falling, and this has created an opportunity for Bloomberg, a man of the center, to change his mind.”
“Here’s why I believe that’s so important: An independent, tough-minded businessman, he represents our best chance to bring America together again and begin the long national process of healing,” she continued. “Unlike those on the far the right and the far left who use their bully pulpit to divide us, he’s a pragmatist, a man who has shown time and again that he knows how to get things done and cares more about results than ideology. That’s a skill in short supply these days, on both sides.”
She went one to argue that Bloomberg is the only person “who seems to understand that screaming at one another gets us nowhere.” Accordingly, she lamented the loss of civil debate and respect in differences of opinion.
“America is a young country, compared with the nations of Europe and Asia, and we still have a spectacular story to tell the world,” Sheindlin said. “But we’re also a work in progress, and the 2020 presidential election will be one of the most important in our history.”
Sheindlin’s public support of Bloomberg is the first time she has endorsed a political candidate in the more than two decades since she has began presiding on her television show “Judge Judy.”