Democratic presidential candidates in the party’s sixth primary debate took aim at Pete Buttigieg for his fundraisers with rich donors, lack of experience, and reluctance to embrace left-wing policies.
“Billionaires in wine caves cannot pick the next president of the United States,” said Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Thursday, referencing a fundraiser that Buttigieg attended in a Napa, California, wine cellar adorned with a Swarovski crystal chandelier. Warren noted she does not hold private fundraisers or “sell access” to her time.
The 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, leads in primary polls for the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus, holding 22% in RealClearPolitics’s average of state presidential primary polls. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has 20%, former Vice President Joe Biden has 18.8%, and Warren holds 16%.
Buttigieg largely escaped attacks in the November round, but they piled on during Thursday’s debate at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Tensions that had been simmering between Warren and Buttigieg over campaign contributions and his resistance to left-wing ideas such as federally paid college boiled over in the second hour of the debate.
“I am literally the only person on this stage who is not a millionaire or billionaire,” Buttigieg said, highlighting Warren’s estimated $12 million net worth. “This is the problem with issuing purity tests you cannot yourself pass.”
The blows kept coming.
Sanders, who has no campaign donations from billionaires, said that Buttigieg is “trailing” Biden’s 44 billionaire campaign donors.
“You’ve only got 39 billionaires contributing,” Sanders said. “I know you’re an energetic guy and a competitive guy, so see if you can take on Joe on that issue.”
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang took a swipe at Buttigieg while explaining his plan to give every American $100 “democracy dollars” to contribute to candidates.
“You’d see many many more women run for Congress because they wouldn’t have to go shake the money tree in the wine cave,” Yang said.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar seemed to offer relief. “I did not come here to listen to this argument,” she said before also poking fun at the fundraiser. “I have never even been to a wine cave; I’ve been to the wind cave in South Dakota.”
A few minutes later, Klobuchar said that Buttigieg, a newcomer to the national stage running on bringing a fresh perspective to politics, had “denigrated” the experience of other candidates on the stage.
“Try putting together a coalition to bring you back to office with 80% of the vote as a gay dude in Mike Pence’s Indiana,” Buttigieg hit back, protesting her suggestion that his experience was not applicable.
“If you had won in Indiana, that would be one thing. You tried and you lost by 20 points,” Klobuchar said, referencing Buttigieg’s failed 2010 state treasurer bid.
Despite remaining the front-runner in national polls, Biden largely faded into the background, leaving Buttigieg to fight off the mob alone. Businessman Tom Steyer resisted conflict and interjecting in the spats.
Throughout the debate, Klobuchar, who registers at 3.3% in RealClearPolitics’s average of national polls, benefited from playing a uniting healer and jumping in without threat of rivals trying to tear her down. Her jokes lightened the mood in the first subdued hour of the debate during wonky policy discussions and drew laughs from the audience.
At one point, she interrupted a heated exchange between Biden and Sanders over healthcare costs with a witty remark. “I promise when I am president, I will get your pharmaceutical bills done,” Klobuchar told Sanders.
“I was on Trevor Noah’s show once, I explained how in the history of the Senate there was something like 2,000 men and only 50 women in the whole history, and he said if a nightclub had numbers that bad, they would shut it down,” she said when discussing the possibility of being the first woman president.
