Iowa Democrat Senate candidate Abby Finkenauer, who is trying to fill a war chest for her election, reportedly found a way to accept corporate campaign cash without going back on her word.
Finkenauer is looking to make it out of the field of Democrats and take on seven-term Republican incumbent Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and she found a way to take corporate cash around her self-imposed corporate PAC money ban.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) attends a campaign event Oct. 29, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
In fact, in a video shared by the Washington Free Beacon, during last Monday’s candidate forum, Finkenauer explained how “proud” she was able to raise millions of dollars by not taking a “dime of corporate PAC money.”
But in the clip, Finkenauer did not mention the thousands of dollars she has accepted from Senate leadership committees, aligned with Senate Democrats, that are all funded by corporations.
Finkenauer accepted $16,500 from leadership committees last year that have accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars of corporate cash, all while she pledged to “fight for working families, not corporate elites” in November.
For instance, Elect Democratic Women, a PAC associated with Democrat Reps. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), Julia Brownley (D-CA), and Lois Frankel (D-FL) gave Finkenauer $5,000 in September. During the last cycle, the PAC reportedly took in tens of thousands of dollars from corporations such as Aflac, Anheuser-Busch, AT&T, Capital One, and Pfizer.
In December, she also accepted $5,000 from the leadership PAC closely assigned with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the 2020 cycle, Pelosi’s PAC, PAC to the Future, took donations from Comcast, Deloitte, General Motors, Google, and Visa.
As Finkenauer touts her ability to raise money, she is still, however, unsuccessful in the hypothetical polls against the former President Trump-endorsed Grassley, who has crushed Finkenauer by double digits.
A December poll of likely voters in Iowa showed Grassley over Finkenauer 53 percent to 39 percent. In March, the 88-year-old senator also held a similar lead, with 53.4 percent of likely general election voters saying they would vote for Grassley over the 38.5 percent who said they would vote for Finkenauer.
Before Finkenauer has a chance to run against Grassley, she still has to make it out of the Democrat primary in June.
Grassley has over $3.7 million cash on hand, compared to Finkenauer’s $723,696 cash on hand, according to the most recent candidate filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) from the end of 2021.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.