Sanders Casts Buttigieg as Billionaire Favorite in Fight for New Hampshire

By Jonathan Easley, The Hill

07 February 20

 

en. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is casting Democratic rival Pete Buttigieg as the preferred candidate of the billionaire class as polls show the former South Bend, Ind., mayor surging in New Hampshire and catching up to Sanders ahead of next week's primary.

Speaking on Friday at Saint Anselm College, Sanders read a list of news headlines about how Buttigieg has raised the most money from billionaires and described him as the favorite candidate for Wall Street donors.

“I like Pete Buttigieg, nice guy, but we are in a moment where billionaires control not only our economy but our political process,” Sanders said.

“Do you think if you’re collecting money from dozens of dozens of billionaires you’re going to stand up to the drug companies and you’re going to throw their CEOs in jail if they’re acting criminally? ... Do you think that’s going to happen?” he added.

Sanders's remarks were made to a group of local party leaders, businesspeople and students who gathered to hear him speak at the traditional Politics and Eggs breakfast, a must-stop for all White House hopefuls.

A spokesman for Buttigieg responded by pointing to comments the candidate made Thursday on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."

"I will make exactly one promise to anybody, whether they're giving three bucks online or the maximum allowable by law, and the promise is I'm going to take that contribution and I'm going to use it to build the campaign that's going to defeat Donald Trump so that we can actually get the reforms that this country needs," Buttigieg said.

The new attacks from Sanders come as polls find the two candidates locked in a close race in New Hampshire ahead of Friday’s debate and Tuesday’s primary.

The Iowa caucuses are still too close to call and the state party’s bungling of the data has made the race difficult to analyze, but it appears that Sanders will win the popular vote and split the delegate haul with Buttigieg, who outperformed spectacularly in the first-in-the-nation caucus state.

Buttigieg’s Iowa showing has given him a burst of momentum in New Hampshire, where the latest Boston Globe-Suffolk University daily tracking poll finds him catching Sanders and pulling into a statistical tie.