A top advisor to former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg implied that Bloomberg could spend well over $100 million of his own money on a presidential bid.

Comparing the larger scope of a presidential bid to Bloomberg's previous mayoral bid, Bloomberg advisor Howard Wolfson mused that the billionaire would lean heavily on his own personal fortune if he chooses to run.

"Mike spent more than $100 million in his last mayor's race. Last time I looked, NYC is a fraction of the size of the country as a whole," Wofson told CNBC in an email, referring to his 2009 reelection victory. 

When CNBC asked if Bloomberg would eclipse his 2018 midterm spending ($110 million supporting candidates up and downt he ticket) on a presidential bid, Wolfson said: "Whatever is required."

Wolfson also told CNBC that Bloomberg wouldn't accept money from political action committees if he runs, a stance that's become more popular on the left as both a statement on campaign finance reform as well as an attempt to frame oneself as not beholden to corporations. 

Bloomberg has made no secret about his flirtations with a presidential bid, traveling to Iowa, the home of the first presidential caucus, earlier this month to screen a documentary on climate change. 

During an interview set to air on this Sunday's "Meet the Press," Bloomberg said that he will make climate change a central issue of a bid if he runs. 

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to make climate change a top issue in the 2020 presidential race regardless of whether or not he decides to run himself.

During an interview set to air on this Sunday's episode of “Meet the Press”, the billionaire environmentalist said that voters are growing tired of the “same platitudes” on climate change.

“Any candidate for federal office better darn well have a plan to deal with the problem that the Trump science advisers say could basically end this world,” Bloomberg said.

“I don't know if I will run or not, but I will be out there demanding that anyone that’s running has a plan. I will want to hear the plan, and I want everybody to look at it and say whether or not it’s doable.”

Bloomberg has made climate change a central piece of his post-mayoral political portfolio, along with gun control.  Through various philanthropic endeavors, he’s donated tens of millions of dollars towards projects including replacing coal power plants and investing in areas that are reliant on the coal industry.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg traveled to Iowa to screen a climate change documentary as he continues to flirt with a presidential bid.

When asked about a possible run for higher office, Bloomberg emphasized the need for candidates to come up with “real, concrete answers” for addressing issues like climate change.

“The presidency is not an entry level job, we have real problems,” he said.

“I think the public is tired of listening to the same platitudes that they get ‘We’re in favor of God, mother and apple pie and trust me, I’ll have a plan when I get there.’ No, you have to have a plan.”

A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 45 percent of Americans believe that climate change is both “serious” and requires “immediate action”— the highest since the poll began asking the question in 1999.

But there’s a stark ideological difference in how Americans approach the issue. More than 70 percent of Democrats feel that sense of urgency, compared to just 15 percent of Republicans

The full interview will air on Sunday, Dec. 30. Check your local listings to find “Meet the Press” in your area.

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, who is expected to announce a Democratic presidential primary bid in the coming weeks, criticized President Trump's plan to withdraw troops from Syria as haphazard during an interview on Sunday's "Meet the Press." 

Castro drew a distinction between a desire to bring troops home and what he sees as a lack of a stable plan associated with the drawdown. He argued that Trump's decision, abruptly announced on Twitter this week, is proof "he's behaving extremely erratically." 

"I'm not a big fan of the commitments America has made over these past 15 years, whether it was the Iraq War or this commitment," he said.

"I agree with folks who say that for our own sake, for the sake of our troops, for the sake of our allies, once you're there, you have to have a solid plan for how you are going to withdraw. What we saw this week is not the way it should be done."

Castro has more than flirted with a presidential bid, launching an exploratory committee that many see as a clear sign of his intention. As he delays any official word until a January announcement, his brother (Texas Democratic Rep. Joaquín Castro) joined him on CBS's "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and spoiled what was left of the surprise. 

Watch the full interview below for more on Castro's comments about both Trump and his possibility of running for president. 

The Democratic National Committee announced Thursday that it will sanction 12 upcoming presidential primary debates, with the first ones taking place in June and July of 2019.

Six of the debates will take place in 2019, DNC Chairman Tom Perez said on a conference call with reporters, while the other six will be held in 2020, with the final one occurring in April of 2020. Perez announced that none of the states with the first nominating contests – Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina – would host a debate until the 2020 calendar year.

Given the potential size of the Democratic field – more than 20 candidates, more than 30? – Perez said the DNC would split the debates into separate events on back-to-back nights, with participation on a particular evening determined by a random selection open to the public.

That's in contrast to the early Republican presidential debates in 2016, when the GOP held an undercard debate on the same day before the primetime debate featuring the major candidates.

"We expect that large field, and we welcome that large field," Perez said. "Drawing lots strikes me as the fairest way to make sure everyone gets a fair shake."

Criteria for presidential candidates to qualify for the debates, Perez added, would be based on polling and grassroots fundraising, though he declined to offer specific thresholds; those will likely be announced at later dates.

"This is the first step in an ongoing debate process," he said.

Perez also said the DNC would not bar candidates from participating in forums, but he said it would discourage them to appear in debates beyond the 12 the DNC is sanctioning.

In the 2016 presidential cycle, the DNC came under fire from activists for sanctioning just six presidential debates – though more eventually took place – and for limiting some of the events to weekend nights.

WASHINGTON – The North Carolina State Board of Elections released information and documents Wednesday that suggest McCrae Dowless ran an operation in the 2016 election much like the one he’s alleged to have run in the 2018 election — paying associates to collect absentee ballots from voters and “hand carry” them to Dowless.

The state board said it had provided the same evidence to state and federal prosecutors in both January 2017 and January 2018, but no action was taken.

The state board, which rarely releases such documents publicly outside of a court process, is looking into whether the alleged similar actions in the 2018 election affected the outcome of the uncalled House race in the Ninth District, where Republican Mark Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by just 905 votes.

According to an eight-page "summary memorandum," information gathered through interviews by the state board's investigators "strongly suggested" that Dowless hired associates to collect absentee ballots from voters in Bladen County during the 2016 election cycle. The ballots had to be returned directly to Dowless in order for his workers to get paid.

A letter sent by the board's executive director to the U.S. Attorney in January 2017 warned about the findings of its "lengthy investigation into various allegations of absentee ballot fraud in Bladen County."

The letter, which was released by the board Friday, reads: "Our findings to date suggest that individuals and potentially groups of individuals engaged in efforts to manipulate election results through the absentee ballot process. The evidence we have obtained suggest that these efforts may have taken place in the past and if not addressed will likely continue for future elections."

Dowless is at the center of the current investigation of illegal ballot harvesting that has now expanded from Bladen County to neighboring Robeson County. Dowless was hired by the Red Dome consulting group, which was working for Harris’ congressional campaign. 

According to Josh Lawson, the state board’s general counsel, in January 2018 the board provided the same 279 pages of documents released today to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI for the Eastern District of North Carolina, as well as the Wake County District Attorney’s office.  

One year earlier, in January 2017, Lawson said, the board had referred the same matters to the same entities for “prosecutorial review and possible criminal prosecution.” Lawson said he was not aware of any prosecutory action by prosecutors in 2017 or 2018. 

The U.S. Attorney’s office declined to comment.  The FBI did not respond to a requests for comment.  A call to the Wake County District Attorney’s Office was not answered late today. The Wake County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to a previous request for comment about its current investigation into the matters.  

"As we were approaching this coming hearing, we thought it was relevant and important information that should be publicly known," Lawson told NBC News.

Dowless, through his attorney, Cynthia Adams Singletary, declined to appear for an interview with the elections board on or before Jan. 2, according to a letter dated Tuesday and released by the board. Lawson, the state board's general counsel, requested the interview with Dowless in a letter dated Sunday that ordered him, "his agents, and assignees to preserve all records associated with elections and/or election-related activities between January 2016 and the present." 

The board will hold a hearing to present its evidence in its 2018 investigation on Jan. 11.

President Trump has upended a lot of norms in politics, but one worth taking a look at is his effect on presidential-cycle spending. 

A lot's been made about Trump's historic fundraising haul for an incumbent president. The first incumbent to begin fundraising in earnest the moment he was sworn in, Trump’s campaign alone raised more than $60 million this cycle (and the combined effort with joint fundraising committees eclipsed $100 million). Those figures don’t even include donations from the final three months of this year. 

Former President Obama raised about $4 million directly to his campaign account in 2009 and 2010 respectively.  

An uncharacteristically large war chest at this point of the cycle has allowed Trump to spend heavily. His campaign committee spent more than $32 million through the third quarter of 2018, with top expenditures going to advertising, paying legal fees and to the company that makes signature campaign apparel like the "Make America Great Again" hats. 

The Obama campaign spent $10.4 million during his first two years in office, much of that on advertising and legal fees. 

Outside groups, predominately Republican ones, have taken a queue from Trump and are too spending a historic amount. There's been $11.7 million in independent expenditures supporting Trump's reelection effort, and just $190,000 in spending opposing him. 

Between 2009 and 2010, outside groups spent just $680,000 on the presidential race, with all but $44,000 of that being spent in support of Obama. 

The books aren't closed on 2018 yet, so these numbers are bound to climb once final reports are due in early January. And the totals don't include money spent by other affiliated groups like national parties that could also help in the reelection bid. 

What's clear now is that the Trump era has ushered in an unprecedented amount of reelection spending so early in the process. But what's not clear is whether this will be the new normal or a Trump-specific phenomenon.  

From Brett Kavanaugh to the Mueller probe to the midterms, it’s been a particularly consequential year in American politics. Here’s a timeline of some of the biggest political news stories of the year as they unfolded in 2018.

Jan. 30: Trump delivers State of the Union address to Congress

Feb. 16: Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicts13Russians and three companies regarding Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election

Feb. 19: Pennsylvania's Supreme Court releases new congressional map, giving Democrats a shot at picking up as many as six congressional seats in the state

March 13: President Trump fires Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is later replaced by CIA Director Mike Pompeo

March 21: Republican Rick Saccone concedes to Democrat Conor Lamb in PA-18 special election

March 22: National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster resigns; he’s later replaced by John Bolton

April 9: FBI raids the offices and home of longtime Trump lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen, seizing business records, emails and documents

April 11: House SpeakerPaul Ryan announces that he won’t run for re-election

May 8: Trump announces withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal

June 12: Trump, in Singapore, holds summit with North Korea's Kim Jong-Un; Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., loses GOP primary to challenger Katie Arrington.

June 20: Trump signs executive order reversing administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border

June 26: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez upsets Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., in Democratic primary; Supreme Court upholds Trump’s revised travel ban

June 27: Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announces retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court

July 5: EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigns amid numerous ethics controversies

July 9: Trump nominates Brett Kavanaugh to fill Anthony Kennedy's seat on the Supreme Court

July 13: Special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officials for hacking Democratic organizations and the Clinton campaign

July 16: In a news conference with Russia's Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Trump blames both countries for the state of U.S.-Russia relations ("I think that the United States has been foolish. I think we've all been foolish"), and he appears to side with Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies on the question whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election ("I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today")

Aug. 21: Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer/fixer pleads guilty; jury finds Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort guilty on eight counts

Aug. 25: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., passes away

Sept. 5: Anonymous senior Trump administration official publishes New York Times op-ed calling the president amoral and erratic, and says many in the administration are working to thwart his agenda

Sept. 7: George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser, is sentenced to 14 days in prison for lying to the FBI early in inquiry on election interference

Sept. 14: Manafort pleads guilty, agrees to cooperate with Mueller’s investigative team

Sept. 16: Speaking publicly to the Washington Post, Christine Blasey Ford accuses Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her more than three decades ago.

Sept. 26: Ford and a defiant Kavanaugh testify, separately, before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Oct. 6: Kavanaugh wins Senate confirmation by a narrow 50-48 vote. 

Oct. 9: UN Ambassador Nikki Haley announces her resignation from the Trump administration

Oct. 19: Saudi Arabia says 18 of its citizens were responsible for killing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi – after telling different stories for more than two weeks

Oct. 22: Trump tweets about the caravan of migrants assembled in southern Mexico, alleging that "criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in"

Oct. 23: Trump admits there's no proof to his claim that Middle Easterners are part of the migrant caravan: "There's no proof of anything. There's no proof of anything. But they could very well be"

Oct. 24: Officials reveal that pipe bombs were sent to prominent Democrats, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, as well as to CNN.

Oct. 26: Authorities charge Caesar Sayoc, a fervent Trump supporter, of sending more than a dozen pipe bomb packages targeted at prominent Democrats

Oct. 27: An anti-Semitic gunman opens fire at Pittsburgh synagogue, killing 11 worshipers

Nov. 6: On Election Day, Democrats win control of the U.S. House of Representatives; Republicans maintain control of the U.S. Senate

Nov. 7: Day after those midterm results, Trump fires U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and lashes out at reporters in news conference

Nov. 27: Appointed Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., wins Senate runoff election in Mississippi

Nov. 29: Cohen pleads guilty for lying to Congress, revealing that Trump’s business was seeking a deal with Russia well into June 2016

Dec. 1: Former President George H.W. Bush passes away at age of 94

Dec. 8: Trump announces that John Kelly will step down as chief of staff by the end of the year

Dec. 11: In Oval Office meeting with Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, Trump threatens to shut down the government if he doesn’t get money for his border wall

Dec. 12: Federal judge sentences Cohen to three years in prison for financial crimes and lying to Congress

Dec. 15: Trump announces that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke will leave the administration at the end of the year

Dec. 18: Judge delays Michael Flynn’s sentencing to allow further cooperation with federal prosecutors

 

The record is thin, but it’s not on Martha McSally's side.

On Tuesday, the Arizona Republican was appointed to serve alongside Sen.-elect Krysten Sinema, D-Ariz., the candidate who defeated her in last month’s midterm election. To keep her seat, McSally has to win an election in 2020.

It's only the third time since 1913 — when a constitutional amendment mandated the direct election of senators — that the loser of a Senate contest has gone on to win an appointment to serve with the winner, according to information provided by the Senate Historical Office.

In both of the previous instances, involving Sen. Edwin Mechem, R-N.M., and Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, the appointed senator lost his next bid for the seat.

In neither previous case was the loser immediately appointed to a vacancy.

In 1954, Mechem lost a race to incumbent Democrat Clinton Presba Anderson. Eight years later, just after he had been defeated for re-election as governor, he had himself appointed to the seat of the late Democrat Dennis Chavez. Mechem ended up serving with Anderson for two years, but, like many governors who move into vacated Senate seats, he lost his bid for election in his own right in 1964.

In 1974, Metzenbaum was appointed to serve alongside Sen. Robert Taft Jr., the Republican who had defeated him in an open-seat Senate race in 1970. Later in 1974, Metzenbaum lost the Democratic nomination to astronaut John Glenn. But he came back in 1976 to defeat Taft.

In addition to those gems, the Senate Historical Office compiled a list of 11 times the losing candidate in a race won a subsequent election and served with the person who defeated him. The most recent example is Republican John Ensign, who won a Senate seat in 2000 after losing to Democrat Harry Reid in 1998. The earliest was Massachusetts Democrat David Walsh, who lost a 1926 contest to Republican Frederick Gillett but rebounded to win a special election later that year and served with Gillett for five years.

Arizona Rep. Martha McSally's 2018 has been a whirlwind—she jumped into one of the closest-watched Senate races of the cycle, fending off a competitive challenge from her right flank before falling short to Democratic Senator-elect Kyrsten Sinema. 

McSally won a consolation prize when Arizona Republican Gov. Steve Ducey appointed her to fill the seat vacated by the late Sen. John McCain (by way of Jon Kyl, who filled the seat for the three months after McCain's death).

But that appointment thrusts her into an electoral gauntlet, as she'll have a tough fight ahead of her to keep her seat. 

The first challenge is straightforward—the calendar. McSally will have to defend the seat in 2020 because appointments only last until the next general election. And then she'll have to run again in 2022 because that's when McCain's seat is normally up for reelection. 

But she also faces further challenges too, both from within her party and in a general election. 

Once she joins the Senate, she'll once again have to face the difficult, if familiar task of navigating life as a Republican in the Trump era. 

McSally moved to her right during the 2018 GOP primary as Republicans Kelli Ward and Joe Arpaio took aim at her right flank. But that shift cost her in the general election, as Democrats tied her to President Trump. 

She'll have to do that same balancing act again to protect herself from a credible primary challenge but be ready for a general election, which Democrats will likely contest hard after their 2018 victory. 

McSally is certainly no stranger to a tough election, as she's been running hard her entire political career first for he competitive House seat and now for the Senate.

And she's turned it around before—after a tight loss in 2012 in the race to replace former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, McSally ran again in 2014 and won by yet another razor-thin margin. 

She'll need to replicate that effort again in 2020, convincing a majority of voters to back her just two years after they chose someone else. 

Republican Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky, who’s up for re-election next year, trails state Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear in a hypothetical general election matchup, and just 38 percent of voters approve of his job, according to a Mason-Dixon poll of the state.

In the poll, Beshear is ahead of Bevin by 8 points, 48 percent to 40 percent, while Bevin leads Secretary of State Alison Grimes by 1 point, 47 percent to 46 percent; Grimes lost the Senate race against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2014.

Bevin’s job rating is 38 percent approve, 53 percent disapprove.

Despite these tough numbers for Bevin, the Mason-Dixon pollsters say not to count out the Republican governor.

“It is not unusual for Republican candidates to trail in the early stages of elections in Kentucky. Bevin himself trailed for most of the 2015 race, pulled about even a few weeks out and went on to win. Senator Mitch McConnell has also faced early adversity in his two most recent reelection campaigns, but in both races he stormed back late to win,” they write in a memo.

“Given this recent history, it is far from over for Bevin. However, Beshear is a formidable opponent who won four years ago in a GOP-friendly state election.”

Kentucky’s primaries in 2019 take place on May 21, and the general election is November 5.