NEW YORK — Hillary Clinton sounded like a woman on a mission after her long drive into the heartland: “There’s something wrong,” she told Iowans on Tuesday, when “hedge fund managers pay lower taxes than nurses or the truckers I saw on I-80 when I was driving here over the last two days.”

But back in Manhattan, the hedge fund managers who’ve long been part of her political and fundraising networks aren’t sweating the putdown and aren’t worrying about their take-home pay just yet.


It’s “just politics,” said one major Democratic donor on Wall Street, explaining that some of Clinton’s Wall Street supporters doubt she would push hard for closing the carried-interest loophole as president, a policy she promoted when she last ran in 2008.

“The question is not going to be whether or not hedge fund managers or CEOs make too much money,” said a separate Clinton supporter who manages a hedge fund. “The question is, how do you solve the problem of inequality. Nobody takes it like she is going after them personally.”

Indeed, many of the financial-sector donors supporting her just-declared presidential campaign say they’ve been expecting all along the moment when Clinton would start calling out hedge fund managers and decrying executive pay — right down to the complaints from critics that such arguments are rich coming from someone who recently made north of $200,000 per speech and who has been close to Wall Street since her days representing it as a senator from New York.

The only surprise, even to those who are apparently the targets of the remarks, was that Clinton’s denunciation on the trail in Iowa and in a fundraising email — widely read as a nod to the wing of the Democratic Party that prefers Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to Clinton — came so soon. Far from creating genuine waves on Wall Street, Clinton’s comments were met with a resounding “meh.”

“As a CEO and former Wall Street executive, I applaud Secretary Clinton’s remarks, and I do not view them as populist nor far left,” said Robert Wolf, former CEO of UBS Americas and a major Democratic fundraiser who now runs his own firm.

In the words of Democratic strategist Chris Lehane, a veteran of Bill Clinton’s White House who now advises Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmentalist hedge-fund manager and donor: “The fact is that any Democrat running for president would talk about this. It’s as surprising as the sun rising in the east.”

Clinton — who has frequently been criticized by Republicans for her high-flying lifestyle since she left the State Department and joined the paid speaking circuit in 2013, and whose campaign and supportive super PAC are expected to raise north of $2 billion to get her elected between now and November 2016 — joined a debate that is often identified with Warren, the big-bank antagonist.

“Families have fought their way back from tough economic times. But it’s not enough — not when the average CEO makes 300 times what the average worker makes,” she wrote in her first fundraising note to supporters on Monday.

She repeated the statistic at her first public stop in the early-voting state the next day, but such talk was no surprise to finance-world Democrats who have followed her closely and parsed her language.

“Everybody knows that income inequality is going to be a major issue in the campaign, and the vast majority of people who I know are supporting her agree that it needs to be addressed,” said one of Clinton’s leading donors in New York’s financial community. “She’s not saying that a hedge fund manager shouldn’t be making what they’re making. Just that someone in another job shouldn’t be making 300 times less.”

Still, it didn’t take long for Republicans to accuse her of dishonesty and for liberals to declare that they remain skeptical about her candidacy.

The liberal group MoveOn, which is working to draft Warren, on Wednesday pointed to an earlier statement insisting that it wouldn’t back down on encouraging Warren to run.

And the calls of hypocrisy came swiftly from the Republican National Committee: “It’s hard to take Hillary Clinton seriously when she charges over four times what the average person makes to give a 90 minute speech, and when the Clintons’ own income has exceeded the CEO pay she now decries. There are clearly no limits on phoniness and hypocrisy for Clinton’s campaign,” said spokesman Michael Short.

But such rhetoric is not new for Clinton, who during her last presidential bid called the carried-interest loophole, which allows some Wall Street types to pay lower capital-gains rate on much of their income, a “glaring inequality.”

Tom Nides, a Clinton confidant and Morgan Stanley vice chairman, said her recent comments did not amount to a change of position.

“She has a long history on these issues going back to 2008 and even earlier, from capital-gains taxes to Dodd-Frank,” he said, referring to the bank regulation legislation. “This is not, ‘Oh my God, she’s running to the left.’ This is basically who she has been. She has great relationships with people, but that doesn’t mean she is always going to give those people what they want.”

Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson also touted her “long record of standing up for everyday Americans and their families against some pretty powerful special interests. … She believes that despite the progress in our economy, the deck is still stacked for those at the top, and she won’t stop until everyday families can get ahead and stay ahead.”

As a candidate the last time around, Clinton also spoke out about economic inequality.

“Let’s finally do something about the growing economic inequality that is tearing our country apart,” said Clinton in June 2007. “The top 1 percent of our households hold 22 percent of our nation’s wealth. That’s the highest concentration of wealth in a very small number of people since 1929, so let’s close that gap.”

In Ohio the next February, she added: “We’re going to say, ‘Wait a minute, Wall Street, you’ve had your president, now we need a president for Main Street.’”

Nonetheless, there are persistent doubts, even among past Clinton supporters such as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, about whether Clinton will go very far in reining in tax policies and compensation practices that favor the rich.

She has faced major fire from Republicans and liberals alike for her high speaking fees — some of which came from big banks and private equity firms. And despite Clinton’s attempts to show that she can relate to everyday voters, a strain of mistrust remains among some liberal Democrats. De Blasio, her former Senate campaign manager, who has so far declined to endorse her for president, will keep his voice in the debate by heading to Iowa on Thursday. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — who is also considering a presidential bid — told Bloomberg he was not convinced by Clinton’s recent language. Warren, who insists she will not run, also brought up executive pay in a speech on Wednesday.

And while some liberals took notice of Clinton’s remarks, it is not as if she has suddenly become an anti-bank crusader. Left-wing groups are still interested in seeing her specific policy proposals, which Clinton’s team said will come in due course, once the candidate has finished her current swing of small meetings in the early-voting states.

“So far, so good in terms of Clinton’s rhetoric moving in an economic populist direction,” said Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which is trying to push Clinton left. “We hope she thinks big and backs up her initial populist rhetoric with specifics that are big and bold in the days ahead.”

Anyway, say senior financiers, any grumbling comes from those who do not understand political reality or who are predisposed to oppose Clinton. They take refuge in the idea that Clinton’s rhetoric is more reflective of political necessity than some deep-seated animosity toward the wealthy.

“Basically this is a Rorschach test for how politically sophisticated people are,” said one Democrat at a top Wall Street firm. “If someone is upset by this it’s because they have no idea how populist the mood of the country still is. And what she said is just demonstrably true. People at the top have done well and those at the bottom not so well.”

“The fact is,” the Democrat added, “if she didn’t say this stuff now she would be open to massive attacks from the left, and would have to say even more dramatic stuff later.”

Zachary Warmbrodt, Jon Prior and Dave Clarke contributed to this report.

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