She announced she was running for president from a glittering Manhattan television studio and to plenty of fanfare. She stood in a nondescript upstate parking lot the next day, insisting to local reporters she wasn’t bought and paid for by Wall Street.
It is quickly becoming apparent that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has a money problem. More specifically, the New York Democrat has a problem with where her money has come from.
Before launching her campaign, Gillibrand checked in with the wealthy executives of Wall Street. CNBC reports that the senator was working the phones personally gauging interest and lining up donors. So rather than just talking about her ideas, Gillibrand was talking about her relationship with the big banks.
“I think it’s important for people to know my values are never for sale,” she said in that parking lot, “and that’s why I banned corporate PAC checks, that’s why I’m not taking money from federal lobbyists, and it’s why I don’t think individuals should have super PACs.”
But unfortunately for Gillibrand, the FEC kept the receipts. They are publicly available.
The campaign we’re building will have one core mission: restoring power to people. I won’t accept contributions from corporate PACs or federal lobbyists, and I’m not afraid to take on Trump, special interests or any powerful system – never have been.
— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) January 15, 2019
It is true that Gillibrand doesn’t take PAC money. But she only got clean recently, on Feb 13, 2018, to be exact. In an Instagram video on that day, the senator swore off corporate cash condemning “the corrosive effect of corporate money in politics.” Kicking that habit must have been hard.
The senator has taken tens of thousands of dollars from Wall Street PACs and millions more from financial industry employees and owners. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the checks have come rolling in from financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs ($30,000), Morgan Stanley ($23,500), Citigroup Inc ($17,500), JPMorgan Chase ($10,000), Blackstone Group ($7,500), and others.
Gillibrand also swore off lobbying money in that parking lot. Again, this is a recent development. She didn’t have a problem taking $105,032 from the lobbying industry while running to keep her Senate seat last year ($137,282 from individuals and another $2,700 from PACs). Altogether throughout her career, K Street has kicked a cool $1,008,944 her way.
All that money comes with a political price in a soon-to-be-crowded primary field where all the progressive cool kids are starting to say no to corporate PACs. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., started the trend in 2016 while Gillibrand colleague and socialist superstar, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., made it more mainstream. In turn, this made for an awkward parking lot press conference.
Not only has Gillibrand been caught red-handed chatting up Wall Street, her good government conversion seems born from political expediency not conviction. Don’t follow the money though, Gillibrand said in her defense. Look at her voting record.
“I voted against the bailout twice, I am co-sponsor… for a bill to do a transaction tax,” Gillibrand said somewhat nervously. “I believe that Glass-Steagall makes sense … I supported Dodd-Frank. Just look at the facts, look at my record, I always speak for what’s right regardless of who might be angry or disappointed or not agree.”
This laundry list of progressive good works sounds good. It just doesn’t mean much. Both Dodd-Frank and Glass-Steagall help the big banks at the expense of the little ones.
Dodd-Frank creates the kind of regulatory barriers that the big banks can easily overcome but trip up the little ones. Meanwhile Glass-Steagall, which was repealed by President Bill Clinton, kept brick-and-mortar lending separate from investment banking. A revamped Glass-Steagall like Gillibrand supports would carve out more business for one of her biggest backers.
Her friends at Goldman Sachs don’t operate a commercial bank. Their competitors like Bank of America do, meaning that their business model would be outlawed by Glass-Steagall leaving Goldman to sail smoothly on.
Gillibrand can get away with all of this talk in Manhattan where Wall Street knows that the senator is just going through a phase. They know exactly how much her values cost. They wrote her the checks. Gillibrand will have a harder time around the country, just like she did in that upstate parking lot, when people look at the receipts.
