Buttigieg omitted high-powered bundlers from disclosure

Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign omitted more than 20 high-level fundraisers from a list of top bundlers it disclosed last week.

The public list of bundlers, featuring more than 100 people who have raised at least $25,000 for Buttigieg, was meant to bring a close to more than a week of feuding between Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren over campaign transparency. But the list left off a number of people the Buttigieg campaign had previously touted as top donors in an internal campaign fundraising report obtained by POLITICO.

They include uberwealthy supporters such as Boston power broker Jack Connors Jr. — who declared he was “all in for Pete Buttigieg” in a June fundraiser invite — and Hollywood producer Jordan Horowitz, whose films include "La La Land." Buttigieg also omitted hedge fund investor John Petry; William Rahm, senior managing director at the private equity firm Centerbridge Partners; Nicole Avant, the former U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas; and former U.S. Ambassador to Italy John Phillips. The latter two were also major Obama donors.

Candidates voluntarily disclose bundlers to signal forthrightness and allay concerns about conflicts of interest, and lists of bundlers — people who are frequently rewarded with ambassadorships and nominations to other administration posts — offer important windows into the high-powered networks that support candidates like Buttigieg.

In a statement, the Buttigieg campaign said it had made an error and would update its public list of campaign bundlers “to include an accurate accounting.”

The campaign said the error happened as it tallied the total amount of money the bundlers had raised.

“In creating this updated list, we went through to recalculate totals from the earlier list to make sure we were being accurate,” campaign spokesman Chris Meagher said in a statement. Some people who had been previously disclosed in a document to donors were “inadvertently” not listed again in the disclosure Friday, Meagher continued.

But critics — who have already been wary of the Buttigieg campaign’s approach to transparency — said Buttigieg’s campaign has not been as forthcoming with information as it claims.

“Producing data four days after they were asked for it with obvious omissions, that is sketchy,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, which scrutinizes executive branch appointees, and a frequent Buttigieg critic. “The first time I saw this list, I said, 'There is no way this is comprehensive.' It’s just kind of mind-blowing that they would be this dishonest.”

Buttigieg is the only major current candidate who has disclosed campaign bundlers. Kamala Harris disclosed her bundlers before she ended her bid, while Bernie Sanders and Warren do not attend big-money private fundraisers. But other 2020 rivals — including Joe Biden, who has been frequenting the big-donor circuit — are not revealing their bundlers, though there is a tradition of both Democratic and Republican candidates doing so. President Donald Trump has also not revealed his top fundraisers.

While Buttigieg published a list of bundlers on his website last week, the campaign privately circulated the names of people in its “Investors Circle” — fundraisers who had raised at least $25,000 — in a finance update this summer. The 20 people and couples on that document who weren’t on Buttigieg’s public bundler list last week are: Andrew Tobias ofNew York; Barbara and Rodge Cohen of Irvington, N.Y.; David Winter of New York; Didem Nisanci of Washington; Eli Cohen of Chevy Chase, Md.; Eric Schieber of Chicago; Freddy Balsera of Miami; Genevieve and Robert Lynch of New York; Hamilton South of Cornwall, Conn.; Jack Connors of Boston; John Petry of New York; John Phillips of Washington; Jordan Horowitz of Los Angeles; Kelly Bavor of Atherton, Calif.; Kyle Keyser of Atlanta; Nicole Avant of Los Angeles; Stephen Patton of Chicago; Ted Dintersmith of Charleston, S.C.; Tom Gearen of Chicago; and William Rahm of New York.

Buttigieg has combined the power of low-dollar online fundraising and big events with wealthy supporters to become one of the most successful fundraisers in the Democratic field. He has raised $51 million in his bid for president as of Sept. 30, the most recent fundraising deadline, with 47 percent of the contributions coming from donors who gave less than $200.

But as Buttigieg’s poll numbers have risen in Iowa and New Hampshire, critics on the left are accusing the South Bend, Ind., mayor of failing to live up to Democratic Party ideals. Protesters picketed outside a Buttigieg fundraiser in New York last week, chanting “Wall Street Pete.” Warren, who is competing with Buttigieg for the top spot in February's Iowa caucuses, has been particularly critical, calling out Buttigieg for offering donors “regular phone calls and special access.”

Buttigieg recently began allowing media access to his campaign fundraisers in response to some of that criticism.

Buttigieg, who like other candidates is racing to bank millions of dollars to spend on television and field staff in Iowa and other early voting states, has continued hitting high-dollar fundraisers at breakneck speed between his campaign stops. On Monday morning, the families of several of Silicon Valley’s biggest executives — including spouses and relatives of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg — assembled in Palo Alto, Calif., for an event supporting Buttigieg.

The night before, Buttigieg was in Napa Valley, where Buttigieg and donors dined under a chandelier adorned with 1,500 Swarovski crystals in cavernous room known as a “wine cave.” “Needless to say, we will never have a fundraiser at a wine cave,” Sanders' campaign wrote Monday in a fundraising email to supporters.

Speaking to the crowd in Napa, Buttigieg urged his donors to redouble their work.

“I’m asking to you to work to share whatever it is that brought you here to those that may have gotten a little more cynical about the whole thing,” Buttigieg told the donors. “If we do that, as bleak as things are in our country circa December 2019, my hope and my faith is that, in a few years, we’ll be able to look back on 2020 with pride."