Elizabeth Warren is a hypocrite for criticizing Joe Biden’s fundraising practices, says former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a top ally of the former vice president.
With front-runner Biden’s lead slipping, Warren is emerging as his most potent challenger.
Rendell slams the Massachusetts senator for claiming to shun high-dollar fundraisers for her 2020 Democratic presidential campaign bid while she’s transferring $10.4 million into her campaign coffers from funds raised during her 2018 Senate bid.
“I like Elizabeth Warren. I like her a lot. Too bad she’s a hypocrite,” the former Philadelphia mayor wrote in the Washington Post.
Rendell, who was governor from 2003-2011 and Philadelphia mayor for most of the 1990s, said Warren misled donors about where their money was going, including him. Rendell said he was co-chairman of fundraisers for Warren’s 2018 Senate reelection bid and contributed $4,500 to her senatorial campaign last year.
[Also read: With a spring in her step, Warren, 70, breezes past scrutiny of her age]
Since the White House hopeful’s February launch, Warren has shunned “fancy receptions or big money fundraisers only with people who can write the big checks,” according to a blast sent to her email database at the time.
But Rendell pointed out that $6 million of the $10.4 million Warren transferred from her Senate to her presidential apparatus was comprised of $1,000 gifts and above.
“The senator appears to be trying to have it both ways — get the political upside from eschewing donations from higher-level donors and running a grass-roots campaign, while at the same time using money obtained from those donors in 2018,” he wrote.
Rendell also defended Biden against an attack from Warren, who had earlier criticized the former vice president for hosting a kickoff finance event in Philadelphia after he announced his candidacy in April. Almost 20 attendees had contributed $2,000 or more to Warren in 2018, Rendell says.
“It seemed odd to some of us who gave her money that Warren was experiencing an epiphany less than 12 months later,” he wrote. “It’s one thing to fashion a campaign that relies on grass-roots fundraising, but it’s another to go out of your way to characterize as power-brokers and influence-peddlers the very people whose support you have previously courted.”
This is not the first time Warren has come under scrutiny for her donors. This week the Washington Examiner reported the former Harvard Law School professor and ardent Wall Street critic accepted money from three Palantir Technologies employees, despite slamming the Silicon Valley firm for its software contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
[Related: Poll: Warren ties Biden at 26%]
