The 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial race has so far fea­tured a com­mon theme: can­di­dates clam­or­ing to demon­strate who will most fear­less­ly take on cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca. Across the field, Democ­rats have staked out pro­gres­sive — and at times star­tling­ly new — posi­tions on every­thing from insti­tut­ing sin­gle-pay­er health­care to reviv­ing the Glass-Stea­gall Act, reject­ed cor­po­rate PAC mon­ey and refused to take lob­by­ist cash, all in a bid to prove their pro­gres­sive bona fides.

Even as these candidates vocally reject corporate America, their latest fundraising reports show corporate America hasn't rejected them.

“These num­bers reveal a cam­paign pow­ered by the peo­ple,” said a mem­ber of Cal­i­for­nia Sen. Kamala Har­ris’ cam­paign about her first 24-hour dona­tion haul. ​“The sys­tem is being rigged by peo­ple with mon­ey and peo­ple with pow­er,” said New Jer­sey Sen. Cory Book­er as he pledged not to ​“take a dime from cor­po­rate PACs.” ​“I think it’s impor­tant for peo­ple to know my val­ues are nev­er for sale,” said New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

But even as these can­di­dates vocal­ly reject cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, their lat­est fundrais­ing reports show cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca has­n’t reject­ed them. In These Times exam­ined the April 15 FEC fil­ings of the lead­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates — Cory Book­er, Pete Buttigieg, Kirsten Gilli­brand, Kamala Har­ris, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders and Eliz­a­beth War­ren — and ana­lyzed the dona­tions they received from employ­ees of the six largest U.S. banks (J.P. Mor­gan Chase, Bank of Amer­i­ca, Cit­i­group, Wells Far­go, Gold­man Sachs and Mor­gan Stan­ley) and the world’s six largest pri­vate equi­ty firms (The Car­lyle Group, Black­stone, KKR, Apol­lo Glob­al Man­age­ment, CVC Cap­i­tal Part­ners and War­burg Pincus).

While these firms don’t rep­re­sent the total­i­ty of cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, their prof­its ride on the con­tin­ued growth of cor­po­ra­tions, and they remain deeply finan­cial­ly invest­ed in main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo in pol­i­cy areas such as tax­es, health­care, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and the environment.

Wall Street, a fundrais­ing back­bone for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, guides many deci­sions in Wash­ing­ton around these poli­cies. The sup­port a can­di­date receives from these finan­cial behe­moths is instruc­tive in judg­ing how far they would go as pres­i­dent in sid­ing with pro­gres­sives and buck­ing mon­eyed inter­ests. Not to men­tion that fail­ing to prop­er­ly reg­u­late and break up the nation’s largest banks — which are now big­ger than they were before the 2008 crash and are again engag­ing in risky lend­ing—could lead to anoth­er dev­as­tat­ing crash, as Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor Lawrence Ball has warned.

The find­ings show that, despite can­di­dates’ stat­ed antipa­thy toward Wall Street, a num­ber of them are ben­e­fit­ting great­ly from exec­u­tives and employ­ees of these finan­cial firms.

Book­er

By far the can­di­date most favored by these 12 firms is New Jer­sey Sen. Cory Book­er, who received a total of $88,492 from them over the first quarter.

Book­er, who jump­start­ed and then fuelled his polit­i­cal career with con­tri­bu­tions from the finance world, has in recent years attempt­ed to shed his Wall Street-friend­ly rep­u­ta­tion. Book­er drew par­tic­u­lar scorn dur­ing the 2012 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, when then-Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was lead­ing a pop­ulist-tinged assault on oppo­nent Mitt Rom­ney’s time as head of pri­vate equi­ty firm Bain Capital.

Book­er called these crit­i­cisms ​“ridicu­lous” and ​“nau­se­at­ing.” ​“Stop attack­ing pri­vate equi­ty. Stop attack­ing Jere­mi­ah Wright,” he said on Meet the Press, appear­ing to equate crit­i­cism of the indus­try to the racial­ly tinged crit­i­cism of Oba­ma’s rela­tion­ship to Wright, his for­mer pas­tor, through­out 2008. After get­ting a call from an Oba­ma aide, Book­er walked back his defense of pri­vate equi­ty in a YouTube video in which he encour­aged scruti­ny of Rom­ney’s busi­ness record. Then a few months lat­er, in an inter­view with the Wall Street Jour­nal, he described it as a ​“hostage video” and called film­ing it a ​“dumb decision.”

Since becom­ing a sen­a­tor in 2013, how­ev­er, Book­er has vot­ed con­sis­tent­ly against weak­en­ing Wall Street reg­u­la­tions (though, unlike a num­ber of oth­er 2020 can­di­dates, he has yet to join the calls for a rein­state­ment of the Glass-Stea­gall Act — the Depres­sion-era leg­is­la­tion that sep­a­rat­ed com­mer­cial and invest­ment bank­ing, and whose par­tial repeal in 1999 is cit­ed by some as a cause of the 2008 cri­sis). These lat­est dona­tions, as well as those reg­is­tered dur­ing the 2018 cycle, sug­gest Wall Street has­n’t let these votes sour it on Booker.

In total, Book­er received a total of near­ly $15,000 from eight J.P. Mor­gan Chase employ­ees as well as $17,750 from nine employ­ees of Mor­gan Stan­ley, includ­ing one finan­cial advi­sor who man­ages the wealth of ​“a select group of ultra-high net worth” clients com­prised of ​“entre­pre­neurs, senior exec­u­tives, multi­gen­er­a­tional fam­i­lies and foun­da­tions.” Ultra-high net worth indi­vid­u­als are the top tier of the wealth­i­est 1% — those with $30 mil­lion or more avail­able to invest.

But it’s the pri­vate equi­ty world that was most gen­er­ous to Book­er, who in the past quar­ter received a total of $49,500 from four of the world’s six largest firms. Book­er received $10,200 from Black­stone, a firm awash in con­tro­ver­sy for every­thing from its slum­lord prac­tices after snap­ping up much of the Unit­ed States’ fore­closed hous­ing stock to a plan hatched by one of its exec­u­tives dur­ing the 2016 elec­tion to put Amer­i­cans’ retire­ment sav­ings into hedge funds. Book­er received $2,800 from Blackstone’s exec­u­tive vice chair, Hamil­ton ​“Tony” James, who in 2012 echoed Book­er’s com­plaints about Oba­ma’s crit­i­cisms of the pri­vate equi­ty industry.

Apol­lo Glob­al Man­age­ment (AGM) has shown a par­tic­u­lar affin­i­ty for Book­er, with 28 of its employ­ees show­er­ing him with a total of $32,100. Donors from AGM includ­ed not only investors and port­fo­lio man­agers, but the fir­m’s chief legal and finan­cial offi­cers, four of its part­ners and the glob­al head of its ​“human cap­i­tal” divi­sion. Like many pri­vate equi­ty firms, Apol­lo has been crit­i­cized for its use of lever­aged buy­outs to acquire busi­ness­es, often lead­ing to job loss­es and even bank­rupt­cy, as when cloud com­put­ing com­pa­ny Rack­space laid off 275 employ­ees in 2017 mere months after being acquired by Apollo.

Gilli­brand

A dis­tant sec­ond to Book­er is New York Sen. Kirsten Gilli­brand, who received a total of $46,600 from these 12 firms. Gilli­brand took in $30,600 from the six largest U.S. banks, includ­ing $11,100 from four Mor­gan Stan­ley employ­ees, and $5,600 from two Cit­i­group exec­u­tives — chief oper­at­ing offi­cer (COO) Hamid Biglari and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Christi­na A. Mohr.

Like Book­er, Gilli­brand is also a pro­lif­ic Wall Street fundrais­er with a past check­ered by sid­ing with the indus­try in Con­gress who has, since Trump’s vic­to­ry, worked to turn over a new leaf. The pro­tégé of fel­low New York Sen. Chuck Schumer — him­self no slouch when it comes to solic­it­ing hefty cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions — Gilli­brand has said in the past that ​“rais­ing mon­ey is the very same effort as devel­op­ing a grass­roots advo­ca­cy.” Gilli­brand had pre­vi­ous­ly worked against insti­tut­ing new rules around deriv­a­tives pro­posed by fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors, with the New York Times accus­ing her of ​“going against the cause of reform.”

Gilli­brand has since moved sharply left in response to pub­lic opin­ion, estab­lish­ing her­self ear­ly as a con­sis­tent anti-Trump vote, join­ing calls to abol­ish ICE and even advo­cat­ing to bring back Glass-Stea­gall. Yet she’s also been crit­i­cized for reach­ing out to Wall Street to fund her cur­rent bid for the White House, out­reach that appears to have been reciprocated.

Gilli­brand also received a total of $16,000 this quar­ter from pri­vate equi­ty employ­ees, includ­ing Apol­lo Senior Part­ner Lau­rence Berg, War­burg Pin­cus man­ag­ing direc­tor Cary Davis and Car­lyle Group man­ag­ing direc­tor James Attwood. While Book­er had the biggest total haul from Black­stone, the company’s pres­i­dent and COO, Jonathan Gray, donat­ed to Gillibrand.

Har­ris

Then there’s Cal­i­for­nia Sen. Kamala Har­ris, who received a total of $44,947 from these 12 firms. Har­ris, who was once brand­ed a ​“bankster’s worst night­mare,” and has tout­ed her pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al record against banks as evi­dence of her pro­gres­sive cred­i­bil­i­ty, received dona­tions from five exec­u­tives of these firms. They include Black­stone man­ag­ing direc­tor Tia Break­ley, Mor­gan Stan­ley’s new head of inter­na­tion­al wealth man­age­ment Col­bert Nar­cisse, Bank of Amer­i­ca senior vice pres­i­dent for diver­si­ty and inclu­sion Alex Rhodes, and Gold­man Sachs vice pres­i­dent of finan­cial crime com­pli­ance Mar­garet Cullum.

Har­ris’s most enthu­si­as­tic source of sup­port among these firms, how­ev­er, is Wells Far­go, from whose employ­ees she received a total of $16,713 — the most fund­ing from the bank out of any oth­er can­di­date exam­ined. The donors span mul­ti­ple tiers of the bank’s hier­ar­chy, from bankers and con­sul­tants, to a region­al direc­tor and a man­ag­er, to exec­u­tives like Nation­al Head of Cards and Retail Ser­vices Bev­er­ly Ander­son, both of whom gave the max­i­mum indi­vid­ual dona­tion of $2,800 to Harris.

Wells Far­go’s gen­eros­i­ty to Har­ris rais­es eye­brows for sev­er­al rea­sons. For one, the bank was one of the key play­ers in the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis, pay­ing bil­lions of dol­lars worth of fines for its con­tri­bu­tions to the crash, and it has con­tin­ued to earn legal sanc­tion for doing things like open­ing up accounts with­out cus­tomers’ con­sent and acci­den­tal­ly fore­clos­ing on hun­dreds of cus­tomers between 2010 and 2015. Ver­mont Sen. Bernie Sanders has called the bank ​“the poster child for greed, reck­less­ness and ille­gal behav­ior,” and Mass­a­chu­setts Sen. Eliz­a­beth War­ren has made it a par­tic­u­lar tar­get of her cam­paign, call­ing for the fir­ing of its CEO and for col­leges to stop let­ting it mar­ket finan­cial ser­vices to students.

The oth­er cause for con­cern is Har­ris’s role in the 2012 fore­clo­sure set­tle­ment with Bank of Amer­i­ca, Wells Far­go, JPMor­gan Chase, Cit­i­group and Ally Bank, a key ele­ment of her cur­rent cam­paign pitch. While Har­ris played hard­ball to get more mon­ey from the firms, reporter David Dayen has called the set­tle­ment she helped nego­ti­ate ​“a blight on this coun­try” for its gross­ly inad­e­quate relief to fore­closed homeowners.

As a sen­a­tor, Har­ris has opposed Trump’s roll­back of Wall Street reg­u­la­tions and co-spon­sored a bill giv­ing state law enforce­ment the pow­er to sub­poe­na when inves­ti­gat­ing bank fraud, but has not as of yet called for the revival of Glass-Stea­gall. Har­ris has received crit­i­cism in the past for fail­ing to pros­e­cute OneWest Bank, run by now-Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Steve Mnuchin (who went on to donate to her Sen­ate cam­paign), for fraud­u­lent fore­clo­sure prac­tices, as well as her Mort­gage Fraud Strike Force, which pros­e­cut­ed a dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly small num­ber of cases.

Oth­er notable dona­tions to Har­ris include $13,600 from invest­ment man­agers at pri­vate equi­ty firm TPG Cap­i­tal, includ­ing Senior Part­ner Karl Peter­son, a Gold­man Sachs alum who finan­cial­ly backed Mitt Rom­ney’s GOP cam­paign against Oba­ma in 2012. Anoth­er is Michael Brown­rigg, two-term may­or of Burlingame, Calif., cur­rent state sen­ate can­di­date and pri­vate equi­ty vet­er­an. Brown­rigg has praised ​“the Chi­na mir­a­cle in the 1990s,” which he calls a ​“suc­cess­ful anti-pover­ty pro­gram [that] was based on mar­ket incen­tives and entre­pre­neur­ship,” and which shows ​“pri­vate enter­prise can be a pow­er­ful engine for social ben­e­fits” — state­ments that ignore the vast social and envi­ron­men­tal costs of this ​“mir­a­cle.”

O’Rourke and Buttigieg

For their part, for­mer Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke and South Bend, Ind., May­or Pete Buttigieg have received com­par­a­tive­ly lit­tle from the six biggest banks — $12,987 and $9,035, respec­tive­ly — and none from the top six pri­vate equi­ty firms.

Both have gen­er­al­ly been vague on their pol­i­cy pro­pos­als. But O’Rourke has been crit­i­cized for his past votes, join­ing with Repub­li­cans to chip away at Wall Street reg­u­la­tions, includ­ing weak­en­ing the Vol­ck­er Rule, which bars banks from mak­ing spec­u­la­tive invest­ments with ordi­nary peo­ple’s mon­ey. Buttigieg, mean­while, described his aims as may­or as ​“generat[ing] eco­nom­ic growth and maintain[ing] con­fi­dence in the busi­ness community.”

While a cou­ple of exec­u­tives made dona­tions to these can­di­dates, such as $500 to Buttigieg from J.P. Mor­gan Chase COO Michael Ash­worth and $500 to O’Rourke from Citibank Direc­tor Eric McMichael, most of their dona­tions from these firms appear to be from low­er-lev­el employ­ees, and typ­i­cal­ly num­ber in the hun­dreds of dol­lars each, rather than thousands.

That does­n’t mean finance has avoid­ed the two young upstarts’ cam­paigns entire­ly, how­ev­er. Rather, their pri­ma­ry base of sup­port from the finance world appears to be root­ed in more region­al enti­ties. O’Rourke, for instance, has received maxed-out dona­tions from exec­u­tives and part­ners of finance firms such as Sanders Part­ners and High Desert Cap­i­tal — both based in his home­town of El Paso — as well as Minneapolis/​St. Paul-based Madeira Part­ners, Chicago’s Wick­low Cap­i­tal and Den­ver-based KSL Cap­i­tal Part­ners. KSL part­ner John Ege, who donat­ed $5,600 to O’Rourke, pre­vi­ous­ly worked at Mer­rill Lynch and for the anti-reg­u­la­tion Vir­ginia Repub­li­can Rep. Bob Goodlatte.

O’Rourke also received $1,000 from Robert Wolf, the for­mer CEO of invest­ment bank UBS Amer­i­c­as, who devel­oped a close advi­so­ry rela­tion­ship with Oba­ma as one of his most loy­al and effec­tive fundrais­ers dur­ing his pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns. Wolf, a high-pro­file Trans Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship trade deal sup­port­er, went on to become the Clin­ton cam­paign’s ​“effec­tive busi­ness sur­ro­gate” (in the words of John Podes­ta) and defend­ed her rejec­tion of rein­stat­ing the Glass-Stea­gall Act. Now, Wolf has become an enthu­si­as­tic and vocal backer of O’Rourke.

Buttigieg, mean­while, has received many thou­sands of dol­lars from two part­ners of the South Bend-based pri­vate equi­ty firm Great Lakes Cap­i­tal, as well as an exec­u­tive and sev­er­al employ­ees of ven­ture cap­i­tal and finan­cial ser­vices firms Wick­low Cap­i­tal, Chica­go-based Chilmark Part­ners founder David Schulte, San Fran­cis­co-based Tao Cap­i­tal Part­ners exec­u­tive Isaac Pritzk­er and Seat­tle-based Sec­ond Avenue Part­ners co-founder Nick Hanauer. Hanauer has actu­al­ly called for more pro­gres­sive eco­nom­ic poli­cies, warn­ing his ​“fel­low zil­lion­aires” to reduce inequality.

Buttigieg also received $500 from Staci Bar­ber, whose hus­band John Bar­ber has served as man­ag­ing part­ner of both Citi Pri­vate Equi­ty and Cohe­sive Cap­i­tal Part­ners. Oth­er notable dona­tions in Buttigieg’s fil­ing are from 12 employ­ees and three part­ners of McK­in­sey and Com­pa­ny, the con­tro­ver­sial man­age­ment con­sult­ing firm that has drawn out­rage for work­ing for var­i­ous auto­crat­ic gov­ern­ments and ICE. One for­mer McK­in­sey and Com­pa­ny employ­ee described the orga­ni­za­tion as ​“mis­sion­ar­ies for cap­i­tal” (Buttigieg him­self pre­vi­ous­ly worked for the com­pa­ny, which he has called his most ​“intel­lec­tu­al­ly inform­ing expe­ri­ence”). He also received $2,800 from Joe Sifer, the exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of defense con­trac­tor Booz Allen Hamil­ton, par­tic­u­lar­ly notable at a time when the par­ty base is call­ing for an end to record-high defense budgets.

Sanders and Warren

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Bernie Sanders and Eliz­a­beth War­ren, who have spent vir­tu­al­ly their entire polit­i­cal careers rail­ing against the excess­es of Wall Street and pledg­ing to chal­lenge and rein in cor­po­rate pow­er, received the least amount of mon­ey from the six largest banks.

Sanders and War­ren received $7,034 and $2,800, respec­tive­ly, and their sup­port came exclu­sive­ly from low­er lev­el employ­ees, such as man­agers, attor­neys and bank clerks.

Employ­ees of the top six pri­vate equi­ty firms snubbed Sanders and War­ren com­plete­ly, giv­ing zero contributions.

War­ren and Sanders are not only receiv­ing the least finan­cial back­ing from employ­ees and exec­u­tives of the biggest banks and pri­vate equi­ty firms in the world — they have the least sup­port from exec­u­tives of any finan­cial insti­tu­tions, period.

In fact, only three donors in Sanders’ and War­rens’ fil­ings appear to be exec­u­tives or part­ners at banks or finan­cial firms of any size. Joseph Alsop, part­ner at ven­ture cap­i­tal firm Alsop Louie Part­ners, and Roger McNamee, man­ag­ing direc­tor of pri­vate equi­ty firm Ele­va­tion Part­ners, each gave $2,700 to War­ren. For Sanders, it’s $500 from Paul Met­zger, the chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer of Dynasty Finan­cial Part­ners, a firm that advis­es oth­er invest­ment firms how to grow their businesses.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial con­tenders have made much of the fact that they’re large­ly reject­ing cor­po­rate PAC mon­ey. But as these ear­ly fil­ings show, Wall Street high­er-ups are still con­tribut­ing to a num­ber of 2020 can­di­dates’ cam­paigns. And only a few months into the long race, as vot­ers begin to sur­vey the grow­ing field, Wall Street already appears to have a clear hier­ar­chy of preferences.