Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Tuesday swiped at businessman Tom Steyer and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg following a shakeup in the 2020 White House race with Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) ending her White House bid.
Warren lamented that Harris and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who dropped out of the Democratic primary in late August, were forced to end their campaigns while she asserted that wealthier candidates such as Bloomberg and Steyer were able to “buy their way” into the race.
“Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand—two women senators who, together, won more than 11.5 million votes in their last elections—have been forced out of this race, while billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg have been allowed to buy their way in,” Warren wrote in a fundraising email.
“Running for president shouldn’t be a passion project for bored billionaires. Billionaires shouldn’t have the power to recruit their other billionaire friends into this race, or make threats about what they’ll do to the American economy if they don’t get their way,” she added, an apparent reference to reports that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos asked Bloomberg to enter the race.
Warren’s rhetoric echoed Harris’s own email to supporters announcing she was suspending her campaign Tuesday.
“I’m not a billionaire. I can’t fund my own campaign. And as the campaign has gone on, it’s become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete,” Harris wrote. “In good faith, I can’t tell you, my supporters and volunteers, that I have a path forward if I don’t believe I do.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), another 2020 presidential hopeful, also took a shot at the two candidates on ABC’s “The View” on Tuesday, saying “I don’t think America looks at the guy in the White House and says, ‘Let’s find someone richer.’”