(PresidentialHill.com)- Yet another rising Democratic star is contradicting her own claims that she hasn’t taken a “dime of corporate PAC money.”
Recently, Abby Finkenauer, who is the frontrunner in the upcoming Senate race in Iowa, made those comments. The reality, though, is that she’s accepted many thousands in donations from groups that are at least partially funded by some of the top corporations in America.
During a candidate forum that was held on Monday, Finkenauer said that she is “really proud” of the fact that her campaign hasn’t taken any money from corporate PACs. At the same time, she admitted that her campaign did accept donations that totaled in the thousands from various leadership committees in the Senate.
Ironically, those committees are bankrolled by many of the top corporations in the U.S.
One such incident was a $5,000 donation her campaign accepted last September from Elect Democratic Women. That PAC is associated with Democratic Representatives Lois Frankel of Florida, Julia Brownley of California and Joyce Beatty of Ohio.
In the 2020 election cycle alone, the PAC brought in thousands in donations from various U.S. companies that included Verizon, Capital One, AT&T, Anheuser-Busch, Aflac and Pfizer.
Finkenauer’s campaign accepted another $5,000 donation in December from PAC to the Future, a group associated with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That PAC has received tons in donations from corporations such as General Motors, Comcast, Deloitte, Visa and Google.
In fact, Finkenauer has accepted a total of $16,500 from as many as six Senate leadership committees, all of which accepted boatloads of donations from corporate donors.
All of these contributions, of course, come at a time that Democrats are pledging to “fight for working families, not corporate elites.” Somehow, they are trying to claim in public that they aren’t beholden to the will of corporations will taking their money any chance they get.
This seems to be a trend for Finkenauer — accepting cash for her campaign from various sources that she claims in public to have no relationship with.
Back in 2018, when she was running for Congress, she accepted a $14,000 donation from Pelosi’s PAC, even after she refused to say that Pelosi should be the Speaker of the House.
Last July, Finkenauer announced she would be launching a big against incumbent Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who’s served in the upper chamber of Congress for seven terms. That announcement came only a few months after she lost re-election to her seat in the House by approximately 3 points to Ashley Hinson.
Democrats in Iowa have raised a ton of money in recent years in their attempts to try to unseat Republicans. All of that money hasn’t resulted in victories at the polls, though.
In the 2020 election cycle, for example, Democrat Theresa Greenfield raised $47.5 million compared to $20.8 million for Republican Joni Ernst, who was the incumbent at the time. Ernst ultimately took down Greenfield at the polls by 6 points.
