On Feb­ru­ary 22, footage of Sen. Dianne Fein­stein (D‑Calif.) lec­tur­ing plead­ing chil­dren about her oppo­si­tion to Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez and Ed Markey’s Green New Deal res­o­lu­tion went viral. Sev­er­al media com­men­ta­tors on both sides of the debate cast the video of the 85-year-old sen­a­tor dress­ing down the chil­dren as a case of gen­er­a­tional conflict.

The Feinstein episode points to broader tensions revealed by the Democratic Party's continued reliance on wealthy, well-connected candidates.

But the episode was also a reminder of the per­il of wealth inequal­i­ty in pol­i­tics, with Fein­stein, one of the very wealth­i­est mem­bers of Con­gress, hav­ing a per­son­al finan­cial stake in indus­tries whose bot­tom lines would be threat­ened by the mea­sures in the Green New Deal resolution.

Fein­stein, whose net worth stands at $58.5 mil­lion, has been mar­ried for near­ly 40 years to Richard C. Blum, a wealthy investor who still runs the pri­vate equi­ty firm he found­ed in 1975, Richard C. Blum & Asso­ciates, Inc. Accord­ing to Fein­stein’s most recent finan­cial annu­al report, filed in May 2018 and cov­er­ing the 2017 cal­en­dar year, Blum owns 100 per­cent of Yosemite Invest­ments LLC, through which he has hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars invest­ed in sev­er­al fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies, some of which he has sold off since the Green New Deal began gain­ing increas­ing nation­al attention.

Accord­ing to an amend­ment filed in Jan­u­ary, Blum in August 2017 invest­ed more than $1 mil­lion in the Oster­weis Strate­gic Income Fund, a mutu­al fund run by invest­ment firm Oster­weis Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment. Among Osterweis’s top ten hold­ings are logis­tics firm XPO, a sub­sidiary of methanol pro­duc­er Con­sol­i­dat­ed Ener­gy Lim­it­ed, a sub­sidiary of com­mer­cial air­craft leas­er Ava­tion PLC, and min­ing com­pa­ny Teck Resources, which holds inter­ests in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent oil sands projects across the bor­der in Cana­da, includ­ing the con­tro­ver­sial Fron­tier project.

In the annu­al report cov­er­ing 2017, Blum report­ed hav­ing over $50,000 invest­ed in Antero Mid­stream Part­ners, which owns and oper­ates infra­struc­ture for nat­ur­al gas and nat­ur­al gas liq­uids pro­duc­tion. Trans­ac­tion reports filed in 2018 and this year show Blum has also made major invest­ments in Antero Mid­stream GP. The two com­pa­nies are expect­ed to final­ize a merg­er, form­ing Antero Mid­stream Cor­po­ra­tion, on March 12.

All of these com­pa­nies could poten­tial­ly be impact­ed by mea­sures pro­posed in the Green New Deal, such as cre­at­ing a nation­wide high-speed rail net­work, tran­si­tion­ing to a ful­ly renew­able ener­gy grid and shift­ing to elec­tric vehi­cles. These mea­sures would not only sharply cur­tail the demand for fos­sil fuels, but wean ordi­nary Amer­i­cans and busi­ness­es off their reliance on air trav­el and trucking.

The same goes for some of the Oster­weis fund’s oth­er hold­ings such as Calumet Spe­cial­ty Prod­ucts, NGL Ener­gy Part­ners and Icahn Enter­pris­es. The lat­ter is the busi­ness vehi­cle for fos­sil fuel investor Carl Icahn, a Trump ally who helped shape the president’s pol­i­cy on the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency, and sub­se­quent­ly prof­it­ed from it.

Fein­stein and her hus­band haven’t held on to all of their fos­sil fuel-relat­ed assets. The annu­al report cov­er­ing 2017 showed they had over $100,000 invest­ed in oil field ser­vice giant Hal­libur­ton and indus­tri­al con­glom­er­ate Dana­her, each. Among the many com­pa­nies owned by Dana­her are McCrom­e­ter, which pro­vides mea­sure­ment tech­nol­o­gy for the fos­sil fuel indus­try, and Pall, which sup­plies the oil and gas industries.

Accord­ing to trans­ac­tion reports filed dur­ing 2018, Blum sold the Hal­libur­ton stock in Feb­ru­ary 2018 and lat­er sold invest­ments in Dana­her. He also sold his over $250,000 invest­ment in oil and nat­ur­al gas pipeline com­pa­ny Enter­prise Prod­ucts Partners.

These sales don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly point to any­thing nefar­i­ous. As these reports show, Blum reg­u­lar­ly buys and sells stock in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies from month to month. But the dis­clo­sures also make clear that Blum and Fein­stein have a direct finan­cial inter­est in com­pa­nies linked to the fos­sil fuel industry.

Of course, it may not sim­ply be Fein­stein’s hus­band’s finances that led her not to ​“agree with what the res­o­lu­tion says” and threat­en to vote ​“present” on the Green New Deal. There are also cam­paign dona­tions she has received from com­pa­nies that prof­it from fos­sil fuels. Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Pacif­ic Gas & Elec­tric Com­pa­ny stands as Fein­stein’s sin­gle biggest con­trib­u­tor over the course of her career. And she has long been one of the Sen­ate’s more con­ser­v­a­tive Democ­rats, mean­ing that she may gen­uine­ly believe ​“there’s no way to pay for” the Green New Deal even as she votes for bal­loon­ing mil­i­tary bud­gets. (Inci­den­tal­ly, defense con­trac­tors have been some of Fein­stein’s most gen­er­ous donors over the years).

Still, it would­n’t be the first time Fein­stein’s work as a leg­is­la­tor has over­lapped with her hus­band’s per­son­al finances. Blum spent years heav­i­ly invest­ing in Chi­na while Fein­stein pushed for clos­er eco­nom­ic rela­tions with the coun­try. In 2007, Fein­stein intro­duced leg­is­la­tion that increased tuition aid for low-income stu­dents at for-prof­it col­leges, to the ben­e­fit of two such enti­ties owned by Blum Cap­i­tal Part­ners. That same year, Fein­stein resigned from the Mil­i­tary Con­struc­tion Appro­pri­a­tions sub­com­mit­tee after an inves­ti­ga­tion revealed she had helped dri­ve bil­lions of dol­lars worth of defense con­tracts to com­pa­nies Blum con­trolled after being explic­it­ly informed about projects involv­ing one of the companies.

The Fein­stein episode points to broad­er ten­sions revealed by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s con­tin­ued reliance on wealthy, well-con­nect­ed can­di­dates. The Inter­cept report­ed last year that Demo­c­ra­t­ic oper­a­tives reg­u­lar­ly ask prospec­tive can­di­dates to be able to raise a min­i­mum of $250,000 from the con­tacts in their phones alone. As cam­paigns con­tin­ue to become more cost­ly, lean­ing on con­nect­ed or inde­pen­dent­ly wealthy can­di­dates may pro­duce elec­tion vic­to­ries, but it also runs the risk of pro­duc­ing leg­is­la­tors who are finan­cial­ly invest­ed in the very indus­tries they’re meant to be challenging.

“I was elect­ed by almost a mil­lion vote plu­ral­i­ty,” Fein­stein told the down-heart­ed group of chil­dren after assur­ing them envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe was ​“not going to get turned around in ten years.” Indeed, Fein­stein beat back her pro­gres­sive chal­lenger Kevin de Leon last year even after the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty aban­doned her.

With Feinstein’s open oppo­si­tion to the Green New Deal, her vot­ers may well ques­tion whether her family’s per­son­al finances are help­ing to dri­ve her more timid posi­tions around the life-threat­en­ing issue of cli­mate change.