Elizabeth Warren Traps Pete Buttigieg Into Standing Up for Billionaires With Wine Caves

The most revealing passage of the Democratic debate in Los Angeles on Thursday started when Sen. Elizabeth Warren explained why she decided to forgo private fundraising events with wealthy donors and rely instead on small-dollar donations from supporters.

Within minutes, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who seemed personally affronted by the contrast Warren set up with campaigns like his, which rely on such events, found himself trapped into defending a system of campaign finance that gives influence to moneyed donors. It is the candidate, he suggested, that is corruptible, not the money that’s corrupting.

“I made the decision, when I decided to run, not to do business as usual. And now, I’m crowding in on a hundred thousand selfies,” Warren said at the start of the exchange. “That’s a hundred thousand hugs and handshakes and stories — stories from people who are struggling with student loan debt, stories from people who can’t pay their medical bills, stories from people who can’t find child care.”

Those hours she spends after campaign events meeting and posing for photographs with everyone who waits to see her, Warren explained, mean that she is not using that time to sell access to wealthy donors at closed-door fundraisers. “People who can put up $5,000 or more in order to have a picture taken, in order to have a conversation and in order maybe to be considered to be an ambassador,” Warren said, should not have more access to government officials than people with less money.

Buttigieg, who dined last week in what The Associated Press described as the wine cave of a billionaire couple in Napa Valley that “boast a chandelier with 1,500 Swarovski crystals, an onyx banquet table to reflect its luminescence and bottles of cabernet sauvignon that sell for as much as $900,” raised his hand to respond.

“I can’t help but feel that might have been directed at me,” he began. He then cast the decision to spend time with wealthy donors as necessary to defeat Donald Trump in 2020. Warren, however, held up her campaign as proof that it was not necessary to compete in the Democratic primary, and contrasted her approach to one that gives outsized influence to people with wine caves.

“The mayor just recently had a fund-raiser that was held in a wine cave, full of crystals and served $900 a bottle wine. Think about who comes to that,” she said. “He had promised that every fund-raiser he would do would be open-door, but this one was closed-door.”

“We made the decision many years ago that rich people in smoke-filled rooms would not pick the next president of the United States,” Warren said. “Billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president of the United States.”

Buttigieg tried to steer the conversation away from the private access he grants wealthy donors into a discussion of the fact that he is not personally wealthy — wrongly implying that Warren’s decision to forgo closed-door fundraising was “a purity test,” or an attack on the rich.

“You know, according to Forbes magazine, I’m literally the only person on this stage who is not a millionaire or a billionaire,” Buttigieg said. “This is the problem with issuing purity tests you cannot yourself pass. If I pledge — if I pledge never to be in the company of a progressive Democratic donor, I couldn’t be up here. Senator, your net worth is 100 times mine.”

“I do not sell access to my time,” Warren replied. “I don’t meet behind closed doors with big-dollar donors.”

“Look,” she continued. “I have taken one that ought to be an easy step for anyone here. I said to anyone who wants to donate to me, if you want to donate to me, that’s fine. But don’t come around later expecting to be named ambassador, because that’s what goes on in these high-dollar fund-raisers. I said no, and I asked everybody on this stage to join me. This ought to be an easy step. And here’s the problem. If you can’t stand up and take the steps that are relatively easy, can’t stand up to the wealthy and well connected when it is relatively easy, when you are a candidate, then how can the American people believe you will stand up to the wealthy and well connected when you are president and it is really hard?”

Buttigieg then suggested that Warren was hypocritical because some of the money she began her presidential campaign with was raised from wealthy donors during her previous Senate campaign, before she decided not to “run a traditional campaign,” for the presidency. Warren has cited the need to draw a clear contrast between her approach and Trump’s, which is awash in cash from wealthy donors raised at private events where photos with the president are available for a very large fee.

A short time later, Sen. Bernie Sanders interjected with a hammer blow jibe, leveled at both Buttigieg and Joe Biden, the former vice president who also relies heavily on money raised at private events with wealthy donors. Biden, unlike Buttigieg, allows a pool reporter to attend and make a record of each of those events.

“Now there’s a real competition going on up here,” Sanders said. “My good friend Joe, and he is a good friend, he’s received contributions from 44 billionaires. Pete on the other hand, is trailing, you only got 39 billionaires contributing. So Pete, we look forward to you — I know you’re an energetic guy and a competitive guy — to see if you can take on Joe on that issue.”

Following the exchange, political reporters and progressive Democrats were stunned that Buttigieg seemed to walk himself into a position where he was defending the influence of money on politics that most Democrats abhor.

By the end of the night, Warren supporters eagerly embraced the meme that they had all paid $0 for pictures with her.