Democrats are not going to find the perfect candidate to take on Donald Trump, the Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser said in an interview published on Saturday, so they should consider backing Mike Bloomberg – as she has done.
“We can say that we’re looking for the perfect candidate,” the only woman to be re-elected as Washington mayor told the Washington Post. “News flash: you’re not going to find him or her.
“I’m not going to support a disreputable person, but I do want to make sure the person that we get behind has a programme to win that’s going to cast the widest net.”
Bloomberg is a three-term mayor of New York City with a personal business and media empire and a fortune of around $60bn.
He will not compete in any Democratic primary until Super Tuesday, 3 March, but he has surged in the polls behind huge spending on advertising, visibility in national coverage and stumbles by the former vice-president Joe Biden, previously the leading candidate from the moderate wing of the party.
Bloomberg’s spell in the spotlight has attracted Trump’s attention but it has been harsh too: past comments about women, minorities and even farmers have been unearthed, published and pilloried and his use of the discriminatory “stop-and-frisk” policing policy while in office in New York – and subsequent defence of it – has been roundly slammed.
Bloomberg kicked off his campaign with an apology for the policy, which was ruled unconstitutional in 2013.
Bowser, who is African American, told the Post: “He can’t change history. He can only change what happens in the future.
“And I think what’s important is that a real agenda affecting those young men who were targeted by these practices is what everybody is looking for.”
The 47-year-old also said no candidate in the Democratic field had a perfect record on race, citing the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’ and Biden’s votes for a 1994 crime bill that contained harsh provisions which disproportionately affected minority Americans.
“I would argue that more people are in jail because of that crime bill than stop-and-frisk,” Bowser said.
In a pointed message given the publication of the interview on the day of the Nevada caucuses, which Sanders was expected to win, Bowser said the party should be wary of fielding a nominee committed to tax increases and nationalised healthcare.
“That is a tough message up against Donald Trump, who is presiding over a roaring economy,” Bowser said. “Even if he inherited it [from Barack Obama], he’s presiding over it. And many people won’t understand how taking away their health insurance or raising their taxes is a good thing.”
Trump answered Bowser indirectly on Saturday, posting a video to his Twitter account in which he boasted about the economy and called claims he inherited it from his predecessor “the biggest con job I ever heard”.
Bloomberg has admitted to some of his reported remarks about women and released testimony from female employees of his eponymous company.
But in a torrid first appearance on the debate stage, in Las Vegas on Wednesday night, the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren attacked him in stinging terms, comparing him to Trump for calling women “fat broads and horse-faced lesbians”.
“I look at allegations as just that,” Bowser told the Post. “I think what Mike has said is that he’s used crude language. And I’m pretty sure that all of us can imagine Wall Street 30 years ago, male-dominated. And I think we would all be very naive if we thought a lot of crude remarks didn’t happen.”
She added: “Now, as an African American woman who’s been in a lot of rooms, we can talk about discrimination. But one of the deadliest forms of discrimination is to be ignored and to be invisible and to not be heard.”
Bowser described a close relationship with Bloomberg since 2014, when she first ran for mayor. According to the Post, Bowser backed a Bloomberg White House run after the California senator Kamala Harris dropped out of contention.
Harris and the New Jersey senator Cory Booker, the other African American in the original field, consulted Bowser before ending their campaigns, the Post said. Only Bloomberg asked for her endorsement.
Bowser said she thought mayors were well-qualified to run for president and commended Pete Buttigieg, the 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who has made a strong run in the moderate lane of the primary.
But, she said, Buttigieg has had “difficulty translating his small-town experience into [the] big time”.
Bowser is a national co-chair of Bloomberg’s campaign and has appeared for him around the country. She refused to be drawn on whether she would accept an invitation to be his running mate, should he win the nomination.
“I have the best job in Washington,” she said. “And I’m here to help Mike win the nomination and defeat Donald Trump.”