Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, may be surging in polls, but CNBC found Wall Street Democratic donors ready to pull support if she becomes the Democratic nominee for president.
In September, CNBC spoke to “several high-dollar Democrat donors and fundraisers” from the business and banking community who indicated they would either sit out the election or support the reelection of President Donald Trump. These opinions were becoming “widely shared” in the business community.
“They will not support her. It would be like shutting down their industry,” one major bank executive told CNBC. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Warren’s policies could be worse for Wall Street than President Barack Obama’s were.
A “senior private equity executive” said, “You’re in a box because you’re a Democrat and you’re thinking, ‘I want to help the party, but she’s going to hurt me, so I’m going to help President Trump.’”
CNBC also found a hedge fund executive who cited the president’s tax cuts as “a reason why his colleagues would not contribute or vote for Warren if she wins the nomination.”
A recent Quinnipiac poll showed Warren surging with 27% Democratic support past the Democratic front-runner former Vice President Joe Biden, who had 25%, according to Politico.
CNBC’s Jim Cramer said earlier in September, that “When you get off the desk and talk to executives, they’re more fearful of her winning.” He heard people saying, “‘She’s got to be stopped,’ bouncing around Wall Street since her rise in the polls.”
CNBC reported that Trump and the Republican National Committee had raised more than $100 million in the second quarter, while the DNC raised $7.9 million in the same period.
Many of Warren’s proposals are aimed at taking wealth from businessmen and Wall Street-types. If her radical plan for a wealth tax had been implemented in 1982, the government would have confiscated more than half of the wealth accumulated by business moguls like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Larry Ellison by now.
She’s also planned to make private equity firms responsible for debts and pension obligations of companies they buy and limiting the ability of firms to extract fees, bonuses and dividends from their acquisitions, CNBC reported.
