As Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand jumped into the Democratic presidential nomination contest, they staked out the same position against corporate campaign cash.
“The money in politics is corrupting. It controls everything,” Gillibrand told a gathering in Des Moines, Iowa, last month. “You’ve got to take on the whole system, and you have to get money out of politics. And that’s why, as a very small first step, I’m not taking corporate PAC money.”
Small as it is, this pledge to reject corporate PAC money has become a cornerstone of the Democrats’ primary contest. It helped Harris to raise $1.5 million online from small donors in the 24 hours after she announced. Warren’s campaign didn’t release a total for the post-announcement surge, but she said she got contributions from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
“Every [Democratic] candidate who has announced that they are running for president has said that they will not take any corporate PAC money,” said Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United, a political action committee that’s been leading the charge against corporate PACs. The group’s name refers to the 2010 Supreme Court decision that opened the door to unlimited political spending by independent groups.
Besides Gillibrand, Harris and Warren, those candidates include Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro; South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii; and former Maryland Rep. John Delaney.
One possible reaction to this rejection of corporate money in…
