(Politico)
Elizabeth Warren prohibits special access for big donors — but her campaign treasurer and another close ally are organizing wealthy supporters for Warren behind the scenes while she rips on the rich.
The pair, Boston businessman Paul Egerman and activist Shanti Fry, have maintained campaign titles as Warren’s finance co-chairs, even as her campaign sheared other links to the Democratic donor class earlier this year by forswearing closed-door, in-person fundraising events of the sort Warren did for years in the Senate.
Fry and Egerman — a longtime friend of Warren’s who helped build support for her first run for office — are courting big donors in the northeast by organizing trips, hosting events and acting as conduits for information about the campaign.
Egerman and Fry recently planned excursions to Warren’s 20,000-person rally in New York City and to the Iowa Democraty Party’s Liberty and Justice celebration in the first caucus state, according to people familiar with the trips. Fry solicits donations from supporters as well, one Boston friend said.
Their presence on Warren’s unorthodox campaign shows how the Massachusetts senator — whose campaign is funded primarily by small-dollar online donors and who rails against the corrosive influence of political donors and Wall Street billionaires, even selling a campaign mug labeled “BILLIONAIRE TEARS” on the side — is not completely blowing up her ties to the Democratic establishment.
Egerman, her campaign treasurer, is a prolific political donor himself. And the wealthy supporters Egerman and Fry are organizing today may have another act to play in Warren’s campaign: If she became the nominee, those donors may help finance the national Democratic Party, which can collect six-figure sums and which Warren has said she would raise money for if chosen as the nominee, or help super PACs that would support Warren against President Donald Trump.
And their efforts highlight how some wealthy donors, especially progressives in her Boston base, have continued to embrace Warren, undaunted by the calls for a wealth tax and Medicare for All that have recently prompted furious criticism from Wall Street.