Back in 2012, then Newark, New Jer­sey may­or Cory Book­er went on Meet the Press and defend­ed Mitt Rom­ney from crit­i­cisms over the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial candidate’s career at Bain Cap­i­tal, urg­ing Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and oth­er Democ­rats to ​“stop attack­ing pri­vate equi­ty” and call­ing such attacks ​“nau­se­at­ing.”

Since that infa­mous appear­ance, Book­er has done much to refine his image. Soon after, he took to YouTube to walk back his com­ments shield­ing pri­vate equi­ty. Upon tak­ing office in the Sen­ate, he has vot­ed against Wall Street inter­ests, pledged his sup­port for Bernie Sanders’ Medicare For All plan and sworn off cor­po­rate PAC mon­ey. And dur­ing his 2020 pres­i­den­tial run he has styled him­self as an unabashed progressive.

Yet the sources of Booker’s cam­paign fund­ing for his sen­a­to­r­i­al cam­paign com­mit­tee dur­ing the most recent cycle sug­gest he still has a long way to go to con­vince skep­ti­cal pro­gres­sive vot­ers that he’s real­ly turned over a new, pop­ulist leaf. Even as Book­er was pub­licly repo­si­tion­ing him­self as a stal­wart pro­gres­sive, he con­tin­ued to receive mon­ey from firms and orga­ni­za­tions that lob­by, work for, or are oth­er­wise con­nect­ed to the very indus­tries he would, in the­o­ry, have to chal­lenge as president.

Despite reject­ing cor­po­rate PAC mon­ey in Feb­ru­ary 2018, he still received large amounts of con­tri­bu­tions that year from indi­vid­u­als work­ing in indus­tries and lob­by­ing firms whose inter­ests run counter to many pro­gres­sives’ most cher­ished pol­i­cy goals. Among his cur­rent top con­trib­u­tors were indi­vid­u­als from major Wall Street firms such as Gold­man Sachs, Mor­gan Stan­ley, Pru­den­tial Finan­cial and pri­vate equi­ty firm Apol­lo Glob­al Management.

His top source of fund­ing, New York-based cor­po­rate law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Whar­ton and Gar­ri­son, receives much of its busi­ness from the finan­cial sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly Cit­i­group. The firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Whar­ton and Gar­ri­son has worked with Cit­i­group for more than a decade, includ­ing behind-the-scenes maneu­ver­ing in 2010 to pres­sure the SEC to drop fraud claims against a Cit­i­group exec­u­tive. One of the firm’s for­mer part­ners, Mark Pomer­antz, argued in 2014 that the fees the Jus­tice Depart­ment forced finan­cial insti­tu­tions to pay in the wake of the 2008 cri­sis were ​“gross­ly exces­sive” and ​“non­sen­si­cal.”

Indi­vid­u­als from sev­er­al top lawyer-lob­by­ing firms have also been among Book­er’s biggest back­ers. One is Sul­li­van & Cromwell, which has lob­bied for cor­po­rate enti­ties such as Bar­clays, UBS and the Pri­vate Equi­ty Coun­cil. In 2017 and 2018, Sul­li­van & Cromwell rep­re­sent­ed both Gold­man Sachs

and the Salt Lake City-based Zions Nation­al Bank, lob­by­ing on behalf of the firms in sup­port of Pres­i­dent Trump’s suc­cess­ful roll-back of

the Dodd-Frank finan­cial regulations.

Anoth­er top Book­er sup­port­er has been law firm Green­berg Trau­rig, which in 2018 lob­bied on behalf of groups includ­ing Bankers Finan­cial Cor­po­ra­tion, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giant Bay­er, the Busi­ness Round­table, Life­point Hos­pi­tals and the Insti­tute for Legal Reform — the lat­ter being the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce’s ​“tort reform” branch that fights to weak­en the abil­i­ty of ordi­nary peo­ple to seek legal recourse for cor­po­rate malfeasance.

A less rec­og­niz­able name is the polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed Gib­bons P.C., ranked for nine straight years by the New Jer­sey Elec­tion Law Enforce­ment Com­mis­sion as the state’s top lawyer-lob­by­ing firm. Book­er received $134,375 from the firm dur­ing the 2018 cycle, a com­bi­na­tion of indi­vid­ual and PAC dona­tions, but his con­nec­tion to the firm extends beyond its dona­tions. In 2015, Book­er held a fundrais­er for a local Assem­bly­woman L. Grace Spencer at the fir­m’s offices, where his staff have also met with local con­stituent groups before.

Accord­ing to its most recent state fil­ing, Gib­bons lob­bied in 2017 for the Amer­i­can Coun­cil of Life Insur­ers, Visa and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies Alk­er­mes and Sanofi-Aven­tis, among oth­ers. In 2016, it also lob­bied for health insur­er Hori­zon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jer­sey. In a 2011 op-ed by the right-wing think tank Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute, one of the fir­m’s part­ners railed against an exec­u­tive order issued by for­mer Pres­i­dent Oba­ma that forced those bid­ding for fed­er­al con­tacts to dis­close their last two years of polit­i­cal dona­tions, liken­ing it to Richard Nixon’s ene­mies list.

Nor­PAC, Book­er’s sec­ond biggest con­trib­u­tor behind Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Whar­ton and Gar­ri­son, is sim­i­lar­ly lit­tle known. Describ­ing itself as ​“the largest pro-Israel PAC,” Nor­PAC also lists among its pri­or­i­ties leg­is­la­tion com­bat­ing the Boy­cott, Divest­ment and Sanc­tions move­ment and impos­ing sanc­tions on Iran. Nor­PAC has also giv­en gen­er­ous­ly to fig­ures such as Sens. Robert Menen­dez (D‑NJ), Ted Cruz (R‑TX) and Joe Manchin (D‑WV). Although Book­er vot­ed for the Iran Deal after much pub­lic ago­niz­ing , he also went against the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion’s wish­es in 2014 by vot­ing to impose sanc­tions on Iran at a key point in U.S.-Iranian rela­tions, and co-spon­sored 2017 leg­is­la­tion pro­hibit­ing US com­pa­nies from join­ing inter­na­tion­al boy­cotts of Israel.

Despite Book­er’s more pop­ulist posi­tion­ing in recent years, this donor pro­file sug­gests that some of the coun­try’s most pow­er­ful mon­eyed inter­ests con­tin­ue to view Book­er as an ally, and some­one worth show­er­ing with great sums of cam­paign cash.

Booker’s rep­u­ta­tion as a friend of finance is also backed up by the speak­ing fees he has dis­closed over the years. From 2014 to 2017, Book­er received thou­sands of dol­lars from exec­u­tives and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of pri­vate equi­ty, law and invest­ment firms includ­ing Sagewind Cap­i­tal, Win­ston & Strawn, Ener­gy Cap­i­tal Part­ners and Tril­li­um Man­age­ment. One pay­ment came from Ron Piervin­cen­zi, a for­mer part­ner at the con­tro­ver­sial McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny where he worked for its Glob­al Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and Med­ical Prod­ucts Prac­tice, before mov­ing on to Bio­gen, a multi­na­tion­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and biotech com­pa­ny. That mon­ey was paid out to an undis­closed charity.

A seem­ing­ly less trou­bling source of sup­port for Book­er is for­mer class­mate Steve Phillips, a wealthy San Fran­cis­co-based lawyer and Cen­ter for Amer­i­can Progress fel­low. Phillips, who has pledged to raise $10 mil­lion for Book­er, was involved in var­i­ous left-wing caus­es dur­ing his col­lege years, earn­ing him the ire of the Right. He has long crit­i­cized the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s shaft­ing of minor­i­ty vot­ers, and finan­cial­ly backed Stacey Abrams and Ben Jeal­ous in their guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paigns last year. Through the Pow­er­PAC+ that he co-found­ed, Phillips also ​“con­duct­ed the largest inde­pen­dent vot­er mobi­liza­tion effort back­ing Barack Oba­ma, Cory Book­er, and Kamala Har­ris,” accord­ing to its web­site. (Pow­er­PAC+ gave $5,000 to Book­er for his 2014 race).

So where does Phillips’ Pow­er­PAC+ get its mon­ey? In 2018, near­ly $2 mil­lion of its funds came from Herb San­dler, Phillips’ father in law and Demo­c­ra­t­ic donor who also funds the news out­let ProP­ub­li­ca. San­dler also secret­ly paid Clin­ton cam­paign chair­man John Podes­ta $7,000 a month for con­sult­ing work dur­ing the 2016 cam­paign. PowerPAC+’s oth­er major con­trib­u­tor is the Black Eco­nom­ic Alliance PAC, which con­tributed $350,000 and whose founders have pre­vi­ous­ly met with Book­er and Harris.

The Black Eco­nom­ic Alliance is an enti­ty cre­at­ed by a coali­tion of busi­ness exec­u­tives and hosts a board of direc­tors that includes cur­rent and for­mer exec­u­tives and board mem­bers in indus­tries like real estate man­age­ment, weapons man­u­fac­tur­ing, invest­ment bank­ing and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions. It is co-chaired by Tony Coles, a biotech firm exec­u­tive and for­mer CEO of Onyx Pharmaceuticals.

The Black Eco­nom­ic Alliance’s PAC has received dona­tions from rep­re­sen­ta­tives of orga­ni­za­tions like Cit­i­group, Mor­gan Stan­ley and Black­stone, a pri­vate equi­ty firm that has prof­it­ed from the finan­cial cri­sis by buy­ing up fore­closed homes, act­ing as a vir­tu­al slum lord, and evict­ing its ten­ants at sky-high rates. Some of the big names on its advi­so­ry board include for­mer RNC chair­man Michael Steele, for­mer Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor Susan Rice, for­mer Gold­man Sachs co-CEO and Clin­ton Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Robert Rubin (per­haps best known for spear­head­ing the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion’s dereg­u­la­tion of Wall Street), and Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and is cur­rent­ly work­ing on Star­bucks bil­lion­aire Howard Schultz’s run.

The Alliance has engaged in such ini­tia­tives as fund­ing screen­ings of Sel­ma at schools around the coun­try and rais­ing mon­ey for a police reform plan in the wake of police shoot­ings. But its pre­scrip­tions for ​“black eco­nom­ic progress,” as out­lined by its exec­u­tive direc­tor Akun­na Cook, rely pri­mar­i­ly on poli­cies such as invest­ment in STEM fields, voca­tion­al schools and appren­tice­ships, down-pay­ment assis­tance and sup­port for fair-hous­ing and more gov­ern­ment sup­port for minor­i­ty-owned busi­ness­es. While these may be wor­thy endeav­ors, they fall far short of what many black pro­gres­sive groups, such as the Move­ment for Black Lives, have demand­ed, includ­ing Medicare for All, a fed­er­al jobs pro­gram and expan­sive work­er protections.

How much influ­ence might all these estab­lish­ment inter­ests have on Book­er’s cam­paign and poten­tial pres­i­den­cy? We’ve already seen that, besides

sup­port­ing the Iran Deal, Book­er has stead­fast­ly sided with Israel-backed leg­is­la­tion in Con­gress. At the same time, he’s also con­sis­tent­ly vot­ed against Wall Street dereg­u­la­tion in Con­gress. On health­care, his record is mixed: Book­er noto­ri­ous­ly vot­ed against an amend­ment in 2017 urg­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to allow Amer­i­cans to buy cheap­er pre­scrip­tion drugs from Cana­da, and though he signed on to Sanders’ Medicare For All leg­is­la­tion, he has already seem­ing­ly begun to mod­u­late his posi­tion on the stump, con­flat­ing uni­ver­sal health care with a pub­lic insur­ance option.

The fact that Book­er has refused to dereg­u­late Wall Street despite its sup­port for him is encour­ag­ing. But the next Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent should have far more ambi­tious goals than just pro­tect­ing exist­ing finan­cial reg­u­la­tions: pass­ing uni­ver­sal health­care, break­ing up monop­o­lies, stark­ly lim­it­ing cor­po­rate influ­ence, and imple­ment­ing a Green New Deal, to name a few. Such poli­cies won’t just require rais­ing tax­es on the wealth­i­est to come to fruition, but mak­ing a mas­sive dent in the sky-high prof­its of cor­po­rate America.

The ques­tion is, can a can­di­date whose fund­ing comes from that same cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca real­ly bite the hand that feeds him? We may soon get an answer.