Warren’s no top-dollar fundraiser pledge includes big caveat

WASHINGTON — Dozens of donors enjoyed a white-tablecloth dinner, an open bar and sweeping views of the U.S. Capitol this month when Elizabeth Warren strode on stage to headline a Democratic National Committee fundraiser. The setting was similarly swanky in August, when Warren addressed party contributors at the ornate Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. And it’s likely to be much the same in December, when Warren is slated to headline another party fundraiser in Boston.

The Massachusetts senator has become a leading Democratic presidential candidate in part because she has pledged to forgo events with high-dollar donors, which has resonated with progressives who believe wealthy donors have outsized political influence. But Warren has a notable exception for fundraisers that take in big money for her party, a practice she plans to continue if she becomes the Democratic nominee to take on President Donald Trump.

Warren is already under scrutiny for seeding her presidential campaign with money she raised while running for the Senate, when she spent millions of dollars on fundraisers and took money from large donors. While that’s common practice, the money transfers and the fundraisers for the national party committee could undermine Warren’s image as a relentless fighter for the middle class who would rather spend hours taking selfies with supporters than schmoozing with elite donors.

“She’s a great candidate,” said Don Fowler, who ran the DNC for two years under President Bill Clinton and hasn’t endorsed any of his party’s White House hopefuls. “She’s just off-step on this particular point.”

Fowler and other Democratic leaders say Warren isn’t being honest about her fundraising plans if she were to become the party’s nominee. They say she can’t tell voters she is personally shunning big-dollar fundraisers while simultaneously headlining state and national party events at which she would raise millions of dollars from major donors supporting her bid for the White House.

“What I hope she understands is that after a candidate becomes the nominee, the DNC is their campaign and their campaign is the DNC,” said Rufus Gifford, Barack Obama’s 2012 finance chairman. “There is not a distinction that you can draw.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/36mCO6k