Why Diana Taylor Doesn't Label Herself as Michael Bloomberg's "Girlfriend"

From Oprah Magazine

• Michael Bloomberg entered the 2020 presidential race last November, nearly one whole year after the rest of the Democratic candidates.

• Bloomberg took the debate stage Wednesday night for the first time, opposite Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar.

• Bloomberg’s longtime girlfriend, Diane Taylor, a savvy businesswoman he’s been dating since 2000, has been campaigning by his side.

Michael Bloomberg made his Democratic debate debut Wednesday night. And his fellow blue wave candidates wasted no time grilling him on his record—namely Senator Elizabeth Warren, who hurled questions at the 77-year-old billionaire about his controversial Stop-and-Frisk policy, outstanding nondisclosure agreements, and alleged sexist and misogynist comments. While watching, however, viewers had a more light-hearted question for the former mayor of New York: Who's the beautiful woman always by his side?

Diana Taylor, the former de facto first lady of New York, has been linked to Bloomberg, who served three terms as mayor of the Big Apple, since 2000. Founder and CEO of Bloomberg News, the self-made billionaire entered the 2020 race for the White House only a few months ago in November—a solid year after the other candidates had already been fundraising, campaigning, and town-halling. Since, Taylor has been hitting the trail by his side.

Below, we’re diving into the details about the woman the New York Times calls Bloomberg’s “quietly glamorous sidekick,” the New York Post calls his “gal pal,” and Taylor herself just calls a “unicorn.” A savvy career woman who, like her politicking partner, has hopped party lines from Republican to Democrat, she’s spent decades bolstering her resume with high-profile gigs, rubbing elbows with the upper crust of society, and even entertaining a run for office herself.

Read on for everything else we know as the race for the White House heats up.

She’s the former New York State superintendent of banks.

She rose to the position while Bloomberg was serving his triple mayoral term of New York (2002 to 2013). But even before then, Taylor was a force in the financial business world. “Diana Taylor is anything but billionaire arm candy,” Kathryn Wylde, president and chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, and a longtime friend of Taylor’s, said to The New York Times in 2013.

With an MBA from Dartmouth and a public health degree from Columbia, Taylor has held several high-profile roles including deputy secretary to former New York Governor George Pataki (pictured on the left, below), managing director at Wolfensohn Fund Management, vice president of KeySpan Energy, and vice chair of Solera Capital, a female-run private equity firm—this all according to Business Insider.

Today, she sits on the board of Citigroup and Sotheby’s.

She also chairs the Hudson River Park Trust (there she is sharing a kiss with Bloomberg at the park’s gala, below) and works with charities like Accion and Hot Bread Kitchen. Now 65, Taylor said to the Post, “I define myself first and foremost as I’ve had a fairly successful career.” And, um, yeah, we’d have to say we can do nothing but agree with that statement.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand almost had Taylor as competition in 2010.

The only thing that stopped Taylor from running for the seat as a Republican was the thought of actually having to do the job. “The Senate Republicans basically asked me to run and I thought about it, talked to a lot of people,” Taylor said to the Observer in 2011. “But then when I really thought about it, what attracted me to the idea was the race because I knew I could win that race. It was the thought of actually having to go and do that job, that was really not all that appealing.”

Taylor doesn’t consider herself a girlfriend or a partner, but rather a “unicorn.”

She first met Bloomberg at a luncheon in 2000, after which he asked her out to drinks, per The Washington Post. Since then, however, defining their 20-year romance hasn’t really been a priority. “Nobody’s come up with the language around what we are,” Taylor said. “I’m a unicorn in a unicorn campaign.”

She never had kids. But she says she’s a “step-friend” to Bloomberg’s two daughters.

Bloomberg has two daughters, Georgina, 37, and Emma, 40, who he shares with ex-wife Susan Brown. The two divorced in 1993, according to Town & Country. In 2000, Taylor came along, but it was just her. “I never had kids because there was never anyone I wanted to have kids with,” she said to the Washington Post. As for their blended crew, it seems the dynamic has been positive, as she mentioned that she considers herself “a sort of a step-whatever for Mike’s [two] children—friend, I guess.”

She’s been hitting the campaign trail.

Taylor believes she’s found the next leader of the free world in Bloomberg. “He is a man of incredible capabilities and resources,” she told the Washington Post. “I’ve always thought that he’d be a really good president.” And she’s been hitting the campaign trail to fill the rest of America in on what she knows and believes.

That includes quotes like the one mentioned above, and this one that Business Insider published: “The Republican Party has gone way to the right, and (Bloomberg’s) values are now more affiliated with the Democrats than they are with the Republicans. But he has not changed his values one iota.”

But it also means dropping nuggets of lighthearted goodness no one would know except the woman who has known him for two decades, like: “His favorite dinner is Shake ’n Bake chicken.” Can’t argue with that.

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