Tucked into the Democratic Party's draft policy platform is a pledge long promoted by Sen. Elizabeth Warren that could limit Wall Street's influence in a Hillary Clinton administration. | Getty Warren's no-bankers push makes it into Dem platform Tucked into the Democratic Party's draft policy platform is a pledge long promoted by Sen. Elizabeth Warren that could limit Wall Street's influence in a Hillary Clinton administration.

Elizabeth Warren just scored a victory in her battle to keep bankers out of Washington jobs.

Tucked into the Democrats’ draft party platform is a pledge long promoted by the liberal Massachusetts senator that could limit Wall Street’s influence in a Hillary Clinton administration.


Under the header of fixing the financial system, Democrats adopted Warren’s mantra that “personnel is policy,” vowing to only appoint officials “who are not beholden to the industries they regulate." The language could give progressives ammunition to oppose any prospective agency officials who they do not think will act in the public interest.

The move follows years of pushback by Warren and other liberal Democrats against President Barack Obama's appointment of financial industry insiders to key economic posts.

Now, Democrats as a party are signaling that they want to make it harder for Wall Street sympathizers to get top jobs in Washington. They say they are seeking ”people with a track record of standing up to power and safeguarding the public trust."

"That commitment is a huge deal, as it means that Clinton embraces the idea that hiring skeptics of corporate misbehavior is a key metric to assess her administration,” said Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project, a nonprofit that scrutinizes executive-branch appointments. "The high-profile nature of this platform fight and this specific language makes it much more consequential than little-noticed language in past platforms."

Warren didn’t respond to a request for comment. Clinton’s campaign declined to comment.

To be certain, a platform commitment is hardly ironclad. And Clinton, who served as New York's senator, is connected to plenty of banking industry allies who could come up for jobs.

Plus, not all bankers are opposed by the Warren wing of the party. One of Clinton's campaign aides is Gary Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs partner who earned praise from many liberals when he aggressively cracked down on banks' derivatives trading as chairman of the CFTC.

Still, the platform commitment fits the public mood in this election year and follows a string of nomination fights between the Obama administration and Democrats, who became disenchanted with his appointment of advisers seen as too cozy with Wall Street in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. These included former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers.

It also marks a break from former President Bill Clinton, who appointed Summers and former Goldman Sachs co-chairman Robert Rubin as Treasury secretaries.

Liberal leaders in the Democratic party have been laying the groundwork for such a shift for years.

In 2013, Summers withdrew his name from consideration as Federal Reserve chairman in the face of likely opposition from Senate Democrats including Warren and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) — now both discussed as potential vice presidential picks for Clinton.

In 2014, Warren helped derail the confirmation of investment banker Antonio Weiss to be Treasury undersecretary for domestic finance, which has some responsibility for financial regulation. She argued that the Obama administration needed to “loosen the hold that Wall Street banks have over economic policymaking.” No. 2 Senate Democrat Dick Durbin also opposed Weiss’s nomination.

Since then, Warren has been one of the toughest public critics of SEC Chair Mary Jo White, another Obama appointee and former federal prosecutor who represented bankers as a lawyer at Debevoise & Plimpton. In June, Warren told White during a public hearing that she had “put the interest of the Chamber of Commerce and their big business members at the top of your priority list.”

White also faced opposition from Brown during her 2013 Senate confirmation because of concerns about “Washington’s long-held bias towards Wall Street and its inability to find watchdogs outside of the very industry that they are meant to police."

Beyond the platform language, there are other indications that Clinton is getting the message.

Last July, Warren called on presidential candidates to back a bill sponsored by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) that would block government appointees from receiving bonuses from their former Wall Street firms.

Clinton came out in support of the bill, which is now also echoed by the Democratic platform.

"We will crack down on the revolving door between the private sector — particularly Wall Street — and the federal government,” Democrats say in the draft document. "We will ban golden parachutes for those taking government jobs. We will limit conflicts of interest by requiring bank and corporate regulators to recuse themselves from official work on particular matters that would directly benefit their former employers. And we will bar financial service regulators from lobbying their former colleagues for at least two years."

Outside groups that have spent months trying to direct attention to executive branch hiring in the context of the presidential election saw victory in the platform language.

“We are thrilled that electeds and candidates alike have begun to recognize the tangible impact of having strong positions on keeping personnel conflict-free,” said Lisa Gilbert, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. "Regulators should only be beholden to the public, not special interests and industry.”