Presidential candidate and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg opened a Tacoma campaign office the first week of February. The office is located in the former building of the Annie Wright Upper School for Boys on Broadway. 

Bloomberg has 125 campaign offices nationwide, including in Seattle, Everett, Kent, and Vancouver; he is the only presidential candidate to have an office in Tacoma. 

Inkwell visited Bloomberg’s office and spoke with his campaign staff about the decision to move into the building. The campaigners cited the safeness of the street, the proximity to the farmers market, and the natural light brought in by the large windows as factors that made the building attractive for their purposes. It’s in the “heart of the city,” one said.   

They admitted the building had required some “TLC.” A messy spread of glue remained on the wall where the “School for Boys” sign once hung. The staff spent a day dusting and decorating the otherwise austere space with Bloomberg signs and streamers of red, white, and blue. 

A few vestiges of the building’s former occupation still remain. One wall is papered with Annie Wright’s trademark brick. The complicated lighting system is still set to the Boy’s School schedule, shutting off every day at exactly 4:00 pm.

Bloomberg’s presence in Tacoma is largely attributable to Mayor Victoria Woodards’s support; she is among the 100+ mayors in the Mayors for Mike coalition that has endorsed Bloomberg. According to the News Tribune, Woodards was also one of the 40 mayors selected to attend the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Institute in the summer of 2019. 

As Inkwell was speaking with the campaign staff, a Tacoma resident paid a visit to the office to inform the staff that the Bloomberg campaign materials he receives in the mail, the only materials he receives from any presidential candidate, “make a difference.”