Warren rakes in tech donations as she pledges to break up donors’ companies
Employees of technology giants are pouring money into Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign for president, as Warren calls for breaking up the companies that sign their paychecks.
Warren brought in $248,000 from employees from Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google from the start of July through the end of September, according to new fundraising disclosures filed Tuesday. Warren raised $24.6 million overall in the third quarter of 2019, trailing only Bernie Sanders among candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The tech industry donors — many of whom were white-collar professionals, not warehouse workers or retail employees — gave to Warren amid the Massachusetts senator’s frequent criticism of major technology firms, saying they should be broken up in order to increase fairness and competition in the marketplace. More than two dozen Amazon employees, with titles ranging “vice president” to “engineer” to “manager,” gave between $28 and $615 to Warren, who does not hold private fundraising events and instead raises her money online.
"Giant tech companies have too much power." Warren tweeted earlier this year. Referring to Amazon’s role in its store, she added: “You can be an umpire, or you can be a player—but you can’t be both.”
This week, Warren took another step to separate herself from Silicon Valley’s elite: She promised to not take any contributions over $200 from “executives at big tech companies, big banks, private equity firms, or hedge funds,” and her campaign said it would return donations from people who fit that mold.
Warren’s pointed comments about the tech industry have alarmed high-profile executives like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who was caught on audio saying that his company would mount a legal challenge to any efforts by a Warren administration to break up Facebook.
“At the end of the day, if someone's going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight,” Zuckerberg said, according to leaked audio.
Employees of Facebook donated $41,000 to Warren’s campaign during the most recent fundraising quarter, which finished shortly before Zuckerberg’s comments became public.
Workers for a bevy of other tech companies also contributed to Warren during the third quarter, including individuals employed by Dropbox, Square, Twitter, SpaceX, Ancestry.com and Microsoft. She also drew a $2,800 donation from Sam Altman, the former president of the incubator Y Combinator.
