Raising money from Wall Street for a presidential campaign might be becoming a liability, especially for Democrats.
Democrats weigh whether Wall Street money is still allowed in 2020
Grassroots funding is in for 2020. The question is whether Wall Street is out.
Emily Stewart covered business and economics for Vox and wrote the newsletter The Big Squeeze, examining the ways ordinary people are being squeezed under capitalism. Before joining Vox, she worked for TheStreet.
“This whole thing is coming to a historic moment where the Democrats have to say if they’re going to be the Wall Street party or the party of small-dollar donors,” Waleed Shahid, a spokesperson for the activist group Justice Democrats, told me.
In 2016, the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue took in nearly $800 million in small-dollar donations; in 2018, a non-presidential year, campaigns raised $1.6 billion through ActBlue. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) proved you could run a real presidential campaign around grassroots support, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) used similar tactics last year. Republicans have launched Patriot Pass, their answer to ActBlue.
But as important as small-dollar donations have become, some Democrats are still reportedly heading to Wall Street as they get their campaigns up and running.
“Short of calling Exxon Mobil executives, I don’t think there’s anything worse you could do than stake your campaign out as a Wall Street campaign in 2019,” said one progressive Democratic strategist, who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity.
In recent weeks, I spoke with multiple strategists and fundraisers — mostly Democrats, but some Republicans — to ask whether going to Wall Street for backing in politics was still allowed. Opinions were split about eschewing cash from Wall Street — and corporate America more broadly — entirely. Those in the more progressive wing of the party said any perceived alignment was a nonstarter and unwise, even immoral. But in a competitive race with as many as 30 candidates, some are reluctant to give up any edge.
“Do you want to entirely disarm against a Republican Koch brothers-funded Death Star?” said Amanda Litman, the co-founder of Run for Something, an organization that supports young candidates running for office.
Most agreed that small-dollar fundraising is at least the most important avenue for candidates: The ability to generate enthusiasm among a big pool of individual donors translates to enthusiasm for the campaign overall. Plus, people who give small amounts of money to a campaign are likelier to volunteer for those candidates, tell their friends about them, and vote for them. Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-CA) campaign celebrated that she had received online contributions from all 50 states within half an hour of announcing her presidential bid.
“Money in politics isn’t going anywhere anytime soon,” Adam Parkhomenko, a Democratic strategist who served as the national field director for the Democratic National Committee in 2016, said. “I don’t think there’s any reason why any Democrat needs to unilaterally disarm when it comes to fundraising.”
Especially when it comes to taking out President Trump.
Wall Street ties were a big deal in 2016. We don’t know if they will be in 2020.
Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) have come under scrutiny for their perceived ties to big financial interests, while Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sanders are positioned as the anti-Wall Street candidates. It could turn into a dynamic similar to the one between Hillary Clinton and Sanders in 2016, but whether it will is unclear.
“I’m not sure that Wall Street has the same sort of salience as a villain that it may have had in the last few cycles,” David Gold, director of research at the public affairs firm Global Strategy Group, said.
To a certain extent, Gillibrand and Booker have similar plausible explanations to Clinton as to their Wall Street ties: As they are New York and New Jersey lawmakers, many of their constituents work in finance. Still, that defense didn’t help Clinton shake questions about her loyalties.
Of course, it also comes down to candidates’ records. “Sanders did a good job of manipulating the campaign narrative” in 2016, Erik Smith, a partner at the strategy firm Blue Engine Message & Media, said. “I’m not willing to tell you what that will be next time, because we don’t know who the candidates are.”
Grassroots fundraising is overtaking traditional methods
Even if Wall Street isn’t the villain, small-dollar donations are going to be more important.
“It’s a sign of health for their campaign,” Mindy Finn, a Republican strategist, said. “It also frees up a candidate to spend more of their time connecting with voters on the ground and less of their time having to cater to the wealthiest set of Americans.”
If a candidate isn’t succeeding in online fundraising, it’s likely that he or she isn’t resonating.
“You’re seeing the valuation of a candidate’s strength based on their ability to do small-dollar fundraising,” said Toby Fallsgraff, a digital strategist who worked on Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns.
Gillibrand and Harris, both of whom have launched exploratory committees, have said they won’t take corporate PAC money, as have Warren, Booker, and Sanders. It’s likely most, if not all, Democrats in the race will do the same.
One important sign on that front: The DNC this year will include in its primary debate criteria a candidate’s “grassroots fundraising.”
That means that even candidates who do plan to use traditional methods of fundraising will have to do small-dollar as well. That might especially spell trouble for the potential self-funders, such as billionaire Michael Bloomberg and former Starbucks executive Howard Schultz. (Schultz reportedly might run as an independent.)
The conversation requires some nuance
While grassroots donations are probably the better way for candidates to go over taking Wall Street and corporation money, there are a lot of details and subtleties to the topic that make it a lot less cut and dried than it seems.
“It gets more nuanced, and that makes the debate a little bit more difficult,” Adam Bozzi, the communications director at End Citizens United, said. “There’s a difference between a bank teller and a corporate executive at a bank.”
This means a $2,700 maximum donation from a Wall Street executive and 100 $27 donations from employees of that executive’s company tell very different stories, but it’s not always reported that way. You’ll often see reports that certain candidates got a lot of money from the banking industry, for example, but that money is often coming from employees, not executives.
Beto O’Rourke, who is from Texas, got a lot of donations from the oil and gas industry because there are a lot of people who work in that sector where he’s from. Donors in the securities and investment industry were the No. 4 givers to Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional campaign.
The Super PAC debate is still hard
Focusing on small-dollar donations and saying no to corporate PAC checks and Wall Street bundlers seem obvious, but how to approach Super PACs might be a bit more complicated. Candidates can’t always control what outside money is spent on them, and if they shun Super PACs — including those with some Wall Street money — they may be at an important disadvantage in the general election.
Most Democratic candidates oppose the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision, which opened the door to outside spending — but like it or not, it’s the lay of the land for now. Saying no to Super PACs, including ones fueled by Wall Street money, may mean trouble.
“It’s not worth cutting off your legs to take a philosophical and moral position that will potentially cost you any shot at the nomination,” Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist at Targeted Victory, said.
That’s the calculation both Clinton and Obama made in their elections in 2016 and 2012.
“We’re not going to fight this fight with one hand tied behind our back,” Jim Messina, Obama’s reelection campaign manager in 2012, told the New York Times of Obama’s decision to accept backing from an outside Super PAC.
It is also the case that candidates can’t always control what outside money is spent on them. Many 2020 Democrats say they’ll reject Super PAC support, but such groups may be able to spend on them anyway. A nurses union Super PAC backed Sanders in 2016, even as he slammed Clinton for her Super PAC ties.
But no matter what, it’s clear the fundraising landscape has changed for good.
“It seems like the days when your fundraising relied entirely on keeping a relatively small group of high-dollar donors happy are gone,” Fallsgraff said.
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