Martin O'Malley

Had the Goldman Sachs CEO said his picks are Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush?

By Linda Qiu on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2015 at 4:21 p.m.

A Jeb Bush-Hillary Clinton contest would be a win-win scenario for Wall Street, says former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.

In his presidential campaign announcement on May 30, 2015, O’Malley attacked Bush and Clinton for their supposed mutual backer, Goldman Sachs, the poster child of big, bad Wall Street.
"Recently, the CEO of Goldman Sachs let his employees know that he’d be just fine with either Bush or Clinton," O’Malley said. "Well, I’ve got news for the bullies of Wall Street: The presidency is not a crown to be passed back and forth by you between two royal families."

…

One side of the aisle is clear: Blankfein has fundraised for Clinton. It’s actually his support for Bush where the evidence in lacking.

An O’Malley spokesperson pointed us to an article published in March 2015 in Politico magazine. In it, economic reporter Ben White detailed Blankfein’s close relationship with the Clintons and wrote,"Blankfein has indicated he would be fine with either a Bush or Clinton presidency."

White told us in an email that to his knowledge, Blankfein has never stated this publicly, though he’s suggested it privately, according to anonymous sources close to the CEO.