Wall Street Donors Seek To BLOCK Warren VP Pick
NEW YORK — Big Wall Street donors have a message for Hillary Clinton: Keep Elizabeth Warren off the ticket or risk losing millions of dollars in contributions. In a dozen interviews, major Democratic donors in the financial services industry said they saw little chance that Clinton would pick the liberal firebrand as her vice presidential nominee. These donors despise Warren’s attacks on the financial industry. But they also think her selection would be damaging to the economy. And they warned that if Clinton surprises them and taps Warren, big donations from the industry could vanish.
“If Clinton picked Warren, her whole base on Wall Street would leave her,” said one top Democratic donor who has helped raise millions for Clinton. “They would literally just say, ‘We have no qualms with you moving left, we understand all the things you’ve had to do because of Bernie Sanders, but if you are going there with Warren, we just can’t trust you, you’ve killed it.’”
Most big donors don’t want Warren on the ticket because she is the most accomplished anti-Wall Street populist in the Democratic Party. But many also think her presence would drive a potential Clinton administration too far to the left, poison relations with the private sector from the start and ultimately be damaging to the economy. A constant theme that emerged in the interviews is that executives in the financial industry believe the first 100 days of a Clinton administration could feature potential deal making with Republicans, who are likely to maintain their majority in the House of Representatives. The dream deal for Wall Street would be a combination of targeted infrastructure spending that appeals mostly to Democrats and corporate and international tax reform that could bring Republicans along. The fear is that Warren would make such a deal more difficult.
“Clinton is going to face a divided government unless there is a total tsunami,” said one moderate Washington Democrat with close ties to the banking industry. “What you want in a vice president is someone who can negotiate for you on the Hill, someone like Joe Biden. And that is not a Warren strength.”
All of the donors and senior Democrats interviewed for this story demanded that their names not be used both because they were not authorized to speak about the Clinton campaign’s internal deliberations and because they feared Warren’s wrath. “There is no upside to my talking to you on the record,” one big donor said. “Either I piss off the Clinton campaign or I piss off Warren, or both.”
Several donors said they did not really fear Warren going on the ticket because they do not believe Clinton has a strong relationship with the senator and would not trust Warren to be a loyal No. 2, either on the campaign or in the White House.
“First of all, they don’t particularly like each other,” said one prominent hedge fund manager who has raised millions for Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton before her. But, the manager added, “The absolute predicate for a vice presidential nominee is they have to understand they are No. 2 both during the campaign and once you take office, and I just don’t think Elizabeth Warren is that type of person.”
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“Things are so volatile now with all of the outside groups that all it can take is pissing off one billionaire on Wall Street to make it difficult,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the CRP. “And you don’t run national campaigns for as many years as Clinton has without some serious support from Wall Street, they are just too much of a heavy hitter.”
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http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/elizabeth-warren-wall-street-vice-president-224489
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