As a tough presidential primary race looms ahead, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., may be starting to quietly turn a corner with Wall Street.
Warren, a likely candidate for her party’s nomination, has spared no tough talk for the financial sector over the course of her first term as a senator, rocketing to national prominence for her fiery condemnations of misconduct in the industry. But in July, the Massachusetts Democrat joined a donor retreat at the Martha’s Vineyard home of former UBS Investment Bank CEO Robert Wolf.
This week, the New York Times reported that Warren also met with JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon over the summer, a man she’s expressed less-than-approving sentiments for in the past. During her 2012 campaign, Warren actually called for Dimon’s resignation from the New York Federal Reserve Bank’s board of directors. In 2012, the two traded barbs over Dimon’s suggestion that she didn’t “fully [understand] the global banking system.”
Warren maintains she was “fairly candid about [their] differences” in the meeting, telling a reporter, “I talked about the same things I talk about in public.”
But that’s not exactly what Robert Wolf said after their rendezvous this summer. “I think Senator Warren’s views are more pragmatic; I think she is very different in a conversation than when she’s on the stump,” he told the New York Times.
By Wolf’s account, it sure sounds like Warren is courting potential donors to back her bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2020, a group that will almost inevitably include powerful actors in the financial sector.
As I noted back in July, Warren warned in a recent op-ed for Lena Dunham’s “Lenny” newsletter that, “if elected officials don’t hear from women like you here at Lenny, then policies will be set by the people they do hear from.”
“And, believe me,” she said, “they hear plenty from corporate CEOs, Wall Street, giant corporations, and others who spend lots of money to make sure that their interests are heard.” If she continues to mingle with more executives like Wolf and Dimon in the run-up to 2020, Warren is going to have to count herself among those elected officials who listen when Wall Street donors make their interests heard.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
