LOS ANGELES — Pete Buttigieg’s and Elizabeth Warren’s simmering tensions on the campaign trail boiled over during Thursday’s debate, with the 2020 Democratic rivals clashing over their corporate pasts and fundraising efforts.
Buttigieg, 37, and Warren, 70, have exchanged barbs in recent weeks as they urge the other to be more transparent as they vie for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Warren, Massachusetts’s senior senator, took the first swing, touting her pledge not to host private, exclusive fundraisers. Buttigieg, the South Bend, Indiana, mayor, opened up his events with donors to the press in December after pressure from the senator and other rivals, with a photo emerging this week of the mayor rubbing shoulders with supporters at a ritzy winery in California’s Napa Valley.
“Billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president of the United States,” Warren said Thursday.
Buttigieg countered with a dig at Warren’s private legal work. The former Harvard Law School professor in December disclosed she earned almost $2 million in legal fees from corporate clients, at times working against their middle-class employees.
“You know, according to Forbes magazine, I’m literally the only person on this stage who is not a millionaire or a billionaire,” he said. “This is the problem with passing purity tests you yourself cannot pass.”
The pair’s bickering wasn’t broken up by a moderator but by opponent Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, 59.
“I did not come here to listen to this argument,” she said.
