PELLA, IOWA — Michael Bloomberg may be contemplating a presidential run, but that isn’t stopping Donald Trump from going on the offensive on guns.

The billionaire real estate magnate boasted at a rally Saturday afternoon in Sioux City that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley continued to hammer the Second Amendment message at a Trump rally at Central College.

The veteran Iowa Republican, who said his appearance did not imply an endorsement, called out the need to maintain the «right to bear arms» as he spoke before Trump took the stage.

Trump took up that same mantle during his rambling campaign speech.

«We have to protect our Second Amendment. It is under siege,» Trump told the crowd when going over his legislative priorities.

But if Trump’s messaging on Saturday was meant to scare his fellow billionaire out of a race that is already projected to be the costliest in history, other Republicans were scoffing at the idea of a Bloomberg bid.

As Trump and Bernie Sanders continue to dominate the 2016 election landscape, Bloomberg is actively weighing whether to jump into the race. He is expected to make a decision by March. The former New York City mayor, who has made gun violence a major focus of his political capital in recent years, could dump as much as $1 billion into the race.

His campaign message would be starkly different than that of Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, the other leading Republican in the race. It was Cruz, after all, who made a viral video that showed him heating up bacon with a machine gun.

Republicans campaigning in New Hampshire said they thought Bloomberg’s entry into the race would only help the GOP in the general election.

“Gun control’s not that popular in our country, so I think it’ll be probably splitting some of the Democrat vote if that’s one of his key issues to run on,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) as he left the New Hampshire GOP’s First-in-the-Nation Presidential Town Hall in Nashua. “That seems to be what’s activated in and inspired him in recent elections — gun control. So if he splits the Democrat vote and goes for gun control, that might be good for Republicans.”

Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who made an unsuccessful run for a New Hampshire Senate seat in 2014, said he believes Bloomberg could also take votes away from Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

“That’s great,” Brown said of a potential Bloomberg run. “He’s just so liberal and out of touch with Main Street America.”

GOP candidate Carly Fiorina, who spoke at the same forum in Nashua, invoked Bloomberg’s name in dismissing liberal calls to focus on climate change.

“With all due respect, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — and Michael Bloomberg, for that matter — climate change is not our greatest threat,” she said.

Bloomberg’s trial balloon comes as no shock to Iowa insiders, who have been inundated with Republican and Democratic presidential candidates for the past several months and have had a front row seat to the Trump-and-Cruz show.

“A move like that from Michael Bloomberg shouldn’t surprise anyone, given what’s happened to date in this cycle,» said David Oman, an Iowa Republican supporting Jeb Bush and a former chief of staff to Gov. Terry Branstad. «The phrase ‘Come on in, the water’s fine’ may be relevant.»

But even if Bloomberg’s «dream scenario» of Cruz as the Republican nominee and Sanders as the Democrat came to pass, Oman remarked, there are many weeks to go before the two major parties decide. “It’s way early. No one’s cast a ballot. We’ll see in a week in Iowa.»

Steven Grub, who runs Paul’s Iowa operation, was a little more charitable to Bloomberg.

“We are maybe more ripe for a third-party candidacy than at any point in history, so as the party effort moves to the extremes, I think we risk someone like Bloomberg sneaking through the middle,» Grub said.

Still, several veteran Republican and Democratic Iowa political operatives were skeptical that Bloomberg would be able to make inroads with voters in the state, especially after all the retail politicking candidates have been doing here for months.

Polk County Democratic Chairman Tom Henderson, who is supporting former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, said Bloomberg would have a lot of ground to make up.

“I think out here in Iowa we don’t know much about him besides he was mayor of New York,” Henderson said.

On the Republican side, Jamie Johnson was equally skeptical.

“No conservative will ever vote for Michael Bloomberg — he is pro-choice, and that is a killer right there,” said Johnson, who was senior director of Rick Perry’s doomed 2016 campaign. “He is a liberal. He might be running as an independent. He might have a gob of money that he would like to throw at it, but Americans love their freedom too much to vote for Michael Bloomberg.”

While Trump continues to lead polls and receive a groundswell of support in Iowa and New Hampshire, Johnson said he doesn’t think he has the Republican nomination locked up just yet.

“I’m not yet ready to call this Republican nation for Donald Trump,” Johnson said. «I know that is what the polls point to, but I’ve been in enough Iowa caucus cycles.»

Daniel Strauss and Ben Schreckinger contributed to this report from New Hampshire, and Shane Goldmacher from Iowa.

Anna Palmer

Politico    January 23, 2016