With a Democratic presidential primary field lurching Left and a pair of top candidates increasingly hostile to American’s banker class, financial sector professionals are signaling which presidential candidates they’d be most comfortable with in the White House.
Federal Election Commission filings for the last quarter, reviewed by the Washington Examiner, show Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg were the top recipients of banker cash. The South Bend, Indiana mayor brought in $67,019.42 for the April through June period, followed by the former vice president at $45,456.25.
“The banking industry is more conservative than other industries. The biggest risk for them is uncertainty,” Kenneth Leon, director of equity research at CFRA, told the Washington Examiner. “The primaries are a noisy period. Bankers want a middle of the road Democrat. If you look at what happened under President Bill Clinton, where he and [Treasury Director] Robert Rubin teamed up and delivered big benefits to the financial sector and the American economy, that’s the kind of success bankers want.”
Rubin, a former partner at Goldman Sachs, has given a combined $8,000 to Biden, Buttigieg, and Sen. Kamala Harris of California.
Despite her polling surge after the first round of Democratic debates, Harris brought in much less money from bankers than her fellow front-runners, at $30,314.00. Those with connections to the banking industry, who only spoke with the Washington Examiner on background, said part of that hesitation could be because of her history as a prosecutor.
“Harris came into the Senate as a moderate, but her voting record is almost as liberal as Warren or Sanders,” the individual said. “Wall Street also doesn’t want to be sitting on the other side of a prosecutor. Think about how she treated [Supreme Court Justice] Brett Kavanaugh during his hearing.”
Unsurprisingly, both Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont received the least amount of money from those in the banking sector. Warren brought in $11,482.39 from those employed in some capacity by a bank or financial firm, but a breakdown of those contributors show many of them work in retail or design positions.
Both Sanders and Warren have worn the scorn they’ve received from titans of finance as a badge of honor and a testament to their liberal credentials. This month, Sanders released a slew of “anti-endorsements” from the likes of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and former Goldman Sachs partner Leon Cooperman who have both criticized his policies.
“We can propose all the ideas and plans we want, but nothing will fundamentally change until we have the guts to take on the most powerful corporate interests in America,” Sanders said at the time.
Warren made a name for herself in the Senate through repeated attacks on America’s financial institutions.
“Usually, money makes a policy attack more pointed. People like Warren have aggressive positions against banks and it makes attacks against candidates who have taken their money much more vulnerable,” Democratic consultant Mark Mellman told the Washington Examiner. “Simply receiving money from people who work in finance hasn’t historically been enough to make you vulnerable to attacks, but if you can pair the fact that they’ve taken money with their policies, that makes it far more effective.”
Warren was one of the earliest Democrats to target Biden by name on the campaign trail, specifically noting the relationship he built with credit card corporations as a Delaware senator.
“At a time when the biggest financial institutions in this country were trying to put the squeeze on millions of hardworking families,” Warren said in April. “Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card companies.”
Notably missing from Biden’s recent policy proposals have been any mentions of increased regulations of the financial industry, although he has repeatedly campaigned on repealing the recent GOP tax cuts and has said that “the country wasn’t built by Wall Street bankers.”
