Rising Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg came under attack during a debate among U.S. presidential hopefuls on Thursday, as his rivals questioned the 37-year-old mayor’s thin political resume and criticized his fundraising from wealthy donors, Reuters writes.
During the sixth debate for Democrats seeking their party’s nomination to challenge President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election, an intensifying feud between leading contenders Buttigieg and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren over transparency and fundraising burst to the surface.
Debating a day after Trump’s impeachment in the Democratic-led House of Representatives, the seven candidates were unanimous in supporting that action, but their unity on the issue quickly gave way to spirited and personal battles over money in politics and experience.
The exchanges underlined the increasing stakes in the Democratic race seven weeks before the first contest in the state-by-state nominating process in Iowa on Feb. 3. Opinion polls show the race up for grabs, with Buttigieg taking the lead in Iowa and former Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and Warren fighting for the top in national polls.
U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, lagging the frontrunners and pinning her hopes on a strong showing in Iowa to propel her candidacy, also took a shot at Buttigieg by comparing her Senate accomplishments to his public record.
Warren questioned whether Buttigieg, the mayor of the Indiana city of South Bend who previously served in the U.S. military and was deployed to Afghanistan, was beholden to his big-money donors and described his ritzy, closed-door fundraiser in a wine cave in California.
In a shot at Buttigieg, Warren said she did not sell access to her time or “spend time with millionaires or billionaires.”
“The mayor just recently had a fundraiser that was held in a wine cave full of crystals and served a $900-a-bottle wine,” said the Massachusetts senator, who does not hold big-ticket fundraisers and has focused her campaign on fighting corruption and corporate greed, Reuters adds.
“Billionaires in wine caves should not pick the president of the United States,” Warren said.
Buttigieg shot back at Warren, who has a net worth in the millions of dollars, noting that he was the only candidate on the stage who was not a millionaire or billionaire. “This is the problem with issuing purity tests you cannot yourself pass,” Buttigieg told Warren.
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