Bloomberg’s remarkable partner offers hope
Smart, unscripted and warm, Diana Taylor is proof the former trader has a chance
The last time he toyed with a presidential run, gazillionaire businessman and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg cast an eye across the 2016 race and proclaimed it “distressingly banal and an outrage and an insult to voters.”
If I remember rightly, at least part of the rationale for his ultimately not running as an Independent was a concern that any voter support headed Bloomberg’s way would favour one Donald J. Trump. And then look what happened. All right, so the deeper reason was that Bloomberg didn’t stand a chance.
So he’s in it for real this time. In seeking the Democratic nomination, Bloomberg has triggered a rasorial scratching through all the offensive things he said about women a million years ago. I’m not going to go there. Look instead to Bloomberg’s longtime partner, Diana Taylor.
Thirteen years ago I was eager to interview Ms. Taylor for a feature I was writing about Regent Park, particularly banking in Regent Park. The premise was this: how could Toronto deliver renewal for a community that had been redlined, or red-circled by the country’s financial institutions? Bank branches were suddenly blooming in the vicinity of new-build condominiums elsewhere in our city. But Regent Park was a desert where banking was concerned, replaced by highcost white-label ATMs and a lone non-deposit-taking Cash & Save.
Taylor then was superintendent of banking for the State of New York. One of the striking aspects of her tenure was the push she made behind the state’s Business Development District program, reaching into underserved and unserved communities by using passive municipal funds as a deposit base upon which to build a new branch.
The program wasn’t created under Taylor. But it was Taylor who, working with New York City’s planning department, mapped out the areas most in need and directed staff to reach out
proactively to potential banking partners. The goal was not just to reduce the number of unbanked and underbanked areas, but to see the broad benefits of community development and revitalization that result. “Our whole motivation here is to get people into banks,” she told me then. “It’s a mechanism for saving money and it’s a really good way to get people into the financial system and building credit.”
That’s the deposit-taking side. “It’s just as important as a source of loans into the community for business development,” she said. “Banks are a much better place to go than your local loan shark.”
Bloomberg watchers today would have no reason to be aware of how Taylor has built a reputation for her not-forprofit work, serving on the emeritus board of directors for the YMCA of Greater New York, or working with Solera Capital, a women-owned private equity firm, or serving as chair of Accion, a global nonprofit focused on bringing microfinance to the world’s entrepreneurial poor. She said in one television interview that she has always been interested in women’s issues, particularly in assisting low-income women.
She has worked on Wall Street, holds Masters degrees in business and public health, and has served for the past seven years on the board of Toronto-headquartered Brookfield Asset Management Inc., which, according to its most recent financial statements, deployed $33 billion in capital over the past 12 months. (Brookfield focuses on real estate, infrastructure and renewable power investments.)
Here’s a fact that will mix up that image a bit: she has been featured in Vogue.
This is a woman of substance who is not married to her partner (that would be a White House first), who has moved through a decade’s worth of rumours about her own potential political future. A New York Times story in 2010 reached out to lawmakers, political operatives and consultants to comment on how she would fare in the political maelstrom, eliciting such descriptions as “perfect candidate” and a shoo-in “for offices ranging from governor to mayor of New York.” In televised interviews she comes across as smart, unscripted and warm, a rare trifecta. Her advice to one congressional candidate she was advising: “Don’t be a politician. Be a leader.”
The same Times piece noted that in 2006, when she was still superintendent of banking and two years before the subprime crisis exploded, Taylor gave a speech warning of mortgage brokers pushing suspect products “that hide or bury information about the real terms of the loan.” She has been a consistently staunch consumer advocate.
In the days ahead, we will likely be fed many long Michael Bloomberg profiles that recall his days trading bonds in his underwear or getting fired from Salomon Brothers or referring to women in reprehensible ways.
I would prefer to think of the present and how interesting the Democratic race could become.
Is this all about money? About buying a nomination?
I think it’s a little more complicated than that.