Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg on Sunday said Democrats can’t head into next year’s general election against President Trump hamstrung by fundraising issues and warned against “unilaterally disarming” in the money game.

“We can’t go into this fight against Donald Trump with one hand tied behind our back,” Mr. Buttgieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Mr. Buttigieg had been asked to respond to New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who criticized him for referring to the small-dollar fundraising strategy championed by candidates such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as “pocket change.”

“You don’t go from mayor of South Bend to a competitive presidential candidate without knowing a thing or two about grassroots campaigning,” he said. “My campaign is fueled by the contributions of almost 600,000 individual donors. And most of those are small contributions.”

But he also pointed out that President Trump and his allies brought in $125 million in the most recent fundraising quarter.

“They will pull out all of the stops to stay in power,” he said. “And I think we have a responsibility to the country to make sure that we go into this fight, as Democrats, with everything that we’ve got, and not unilaterally disarming.”

Ms. Warren’s campaign recently said she plans to stick to her plan of not holding “high-dollar” fundraisers in the general election if she is ultimately the nominee, but that she will raise money for the Democratic National Committee and state and local parties.

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