New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg described Democratic senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren using a word that most candidates hope to avoid: “socialism.”
Bloomberg, an independent who has backed both Democrats and Republicans, endorsed Republican Sen. Scott Brown over Warren back in July, made the comments in an interview with the New York Times. (RELATED: Warren links Scott Brown to national Republicans)
“What I’ve tried to do is find liberal middle-of-the-road Republicans and Democrats,” he said. “In the Senate, Scott Brown, who single-handedly stopped the right-to-carry bill. You can question whether he’s too conservative. You can question, in my mind, whether she’s God’s gift to regulation, close the banks and get rid of corporate profits, and we’d all bring socialism back, or the U.S.S.R.”
“But the bottom line,” he added, “is Scott Brown single-handedly stood up when we needed him to stop the right to carry on campus and in the streets of our city and our state and our country. And I said to him, ‘You do that, and I’m going to support you.’ Now, I don’t have to agree with him on a lot of other things, although he’s certainly no crazy right-wing — he’s just more conservative than I am — but here’s a guy that really made a difference, and if we don’t support people like that, nobody’s going to take risks.”