Skip to content Skip to footer

Sanders Calls Out Buttigieg for Raking in Billionaire Donations

Sen. Bernie Sanders contrasted his small dollar-fueled campaign with Pete Buttigieg’s reliance on wealthy donors.

Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg listens to Sen. Bernie Sanders during the Democratic presidential primary debate at Drake University on January 14, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa.

With just four days to go before the New Hampshire Democratic primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday sought to contrast his small dollar-fueled campaign with Pete Buttigieg’s reliance on big money by highlighting the former South Bend, Indiana mayor’s dozens of billionaire campaign contributors.

At a breakfast event at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire hours ahead of the sixth Democratic presidential debate Friday night, Sanders—who has rejected all billionaire campaign cash—rattled off the headlines of several recent news stories on Buttigieg’s billionaire donors.

“I’m reading some headlines from newspapers about Pete Buttigieg: ‘Pete Buttigieg Has Most Exclusive Billionaire Donors of Any Democrat.’ That was from Forbes,” Sanders said. “The Hill: ‘Pete Buttigieg Tops Billionaire Donor List.’ Fortune: ‘Pete Buttigieg Takes Lead as Big Business Candidate in 2020 Field’.”

“I like Pete Buttigieg, nice guy, but we are in a moment where billionaires control not only our economy but our political process,” said the Vermont senator. “Do you think if you’re collecting money from dozens of dozens of billionaires you’re going to stand up to the drug companies and you’re going to throw their CEOs in jail if they’re acting criminally?”

According to the December Forbes analysis Sanders cited, Buttigieg had received donations from forty billionaires and their spouses as of September 30th of last year.

Thirteen of those billionaires gave exclusively to Buttigieg, “by far the most of any Democrat running for president,” Forbes found.

Sanders’ presidential campaign, by contrast, has relied mostly on small donations averaging around $18. As Common Dreams reported Thursday, Sanders raised $25 million in January alone from over 1.3 million donations averaging $18.72.

Using the hashtag #PetesBillionaires, Sanders tweeted following the St. Anselm College event that “this election is fundamentally about whose side you are on.”

Members of Sanders’ presidential campaign also chimed in:

https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/1225821300582535169

The Sanders campaign’s effort to put Buttigieg’s billionaire campaign contributors in the spotlight comes amid tightening poll numbers in New Hampshire. A Boston Globe/WBZ-TV/Suffolk University survey released Thursday showed Sanders leading Buttigieg by just one percentage point in the state—24% to 23%. The Emerson pre-primary tracking poll, meanwhile, still showed Sanders up in the Granite State, with the Vermont senator leading the former mayor by 9 points (32% to 23%).

In the wake of the Iowa debacle and with the New Hampshire primary just days away, Current Affairs columnist and Sanders supporter Paul Waters-Smith emphasized Friday that the senator’s candidacy represents an “excellent opportunity to deepen a vision of a truly democratic society where working people own and control the economy and politics, all the while mobilizing behind an agenda which addresses our burning immediate needs.”

https://twitter.com/NathanJRobinson/status/1225823917287387137

“This election will affect the lives of millions who can’t even vote or donate to the campaign,” wrote Waters-Smith. “Given the stakes, we can afford to put our cynicism and dispassion aside. We can’t let the nay-sayers, the dirty tricks, the smears, or the fear of failure hold us back from doing our part. We are on the brink of achieving something historic, and we can’t let them stop us.”

Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn

Dear Truthout Community,

If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.

We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.

Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.

There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.

Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?

It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.

We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.

We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.

Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.

We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.

With love, rage, and solidarity,

Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy