Wall Street does not like 2020 Presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Not even a little bit.
And that feud is now hurting the party’s efforts to raise funding for a run at taking back control of the Senate.
According to a CNBC report, an insider spoke on condition of anonymity about bigwig Wall Street Democrats who are so worried about the possibility of a President Warren, they are holding back their donations for Democrats running for the Senate in 2020.
The move is intended to put pressure on Schumer, the New York-based Senate Minority Leader who has received millions of dollars in donations from Wall Street over the years, to distance himself from Warren’s economic populism plans.
The financiers reportedly include hedge fund managers and private equity executives worried about their companies and bottom lines should Warren go on to defeat business-friendly incumbent President Donald Trump.
If Warren were to win, their reasoning is that the only thing that could keep her in check is a GOP-controlled Senate, where Republicans currently have a tenuous 53-47 voting edge.
“They feel, rightly or wrongly, attacked. Not just that there will be higher taxes, but that she is running her entire campaign as them being boogeymen,” a political adviser familiar with the deliberations told CNBC. “They don’t feel safe going to Trump, they feel disillusioned by Biden and they see this as a tactic to slow her down. They see it as a way to put pressure on the party as a whole to move away from Warren.”
The source, however, admitted that these financiers are playing directly into Warren’s hands and her messaging that she is willing to take on Wall Street for the working the class. The donors are reportedly becoming more and more frustrated that their preferred candidate Joe Biden’s campaign is sagging.
They also say privately that the moderate Biden is the only Democratic candidate who can defeat Trump head-to-head in key battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida, where Trump is ahead or even with Warren, according to recent polling.
BLS Investments CEO Bernard Schwarz, a longtime Democratic donor, went on record to say he’s heard a number of Wall Streeters say they won’t spend on Democratic Senate candidates if Warren is the party’s nominee.
“I think at the end of the day it’s going to be very hard for Elizabeth Warren to be the leader of the party,” he said, adding he likes her personally but does not favor of some of her policies. “I think the party is much more centrist than the people who have the microphone.”
Cook Political Report political analysts say Senate races in Arizona, Colorado and Maine are toss-ups with Republican seats very much at risk.
Alabama’s only Democratic seat, won by Doug Jones when narrowly he defeated alleged pedophile Roy Moore in the 2017 special election, also is up for grabs, they said. Moore has openly considered another run, which of course Jones is rooting for while national Republicans want to see a new candidate instead of Moore. Trump himself has said Moore can’t win with the accusations against him.
In all, Republicans are defending 23 Senate seats and Democrats are defending 12.