1 / 6Election 2020 BidenFormer Vice President Joe Biden speaks, Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2019, at a town hall for his Democratic presidential campaign in Spartanburg, S.C. WASHINGTON — Joe Biden entered the Democratic primary promising"from day one" to reject campaign cash from lobbyists.Yet hours after his April campaign kickoff, the former vice president went to a fundraiser at the home of a lobbying executive. And in the months since, he's done it again and again.
That includes roughly $6,000 in contributions his campaign accepted from six federally registered lobbyists, including representatives of Google, aerospace and defense giant Lockheed Martin, and pharmaceutical companies, records show. An additional $5,750 was donated by two lobbyists who had been registered shortly before making contributions to Biden's campaign, records show.
Story continuesExcluded from Biden's pledge are lobbyists who work at the state level and those who lobby, or supervise lobbyists, but do not meet the legal threshold requiring them to register. Biden is not alone in accepting contributions from the influence industry. President Donald Trump vowed to"drain the swamp" but has since reaped contributions from powerful industries with business before his administration. And many of Biden's Democratic rivals have made similar pledges that also include subtle caveats and omissions.
Several days before, Biden attended a fundraiser at the Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, home of Peter Shields, the leader of Washington-based Wiley Rein, a firm with recent lobbying clients that include AT&T, global mining company Glencore, Nucor steel, Verizon and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.