BLOG VIEW: There is an old saying that ‘an enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ There is also another old saying that ‘revenge is a dish best served cold.’ I would like to offer a new saying: Use your brain before you throw money at political candidates.
This new saying was inspired by a Huffington Post article which stated that the financial services industry has provided nearly $315,000 in the second quarter to the re-election campaign of Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass. This represents nearly 16% of the nearly $2 million that Brown raised during this period.
During the first quarter, the Brown re-election campaign received $404,206 from the financial services industry. That quarterly figure represented the third-highest amount of financial services industry political donations to a candidate in a 2012 senatorial race.
Why is Brown's campaign raking in financial services industry campaign donations? Well, there is a possibility that the Republican incumbent will be facing a Democratic challenger who is very, very familiar to MortgageOrb readers: Elizabeth Warren, the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Warren, of course, is not working in Washington at the moment, and there is a lot of talk among Democratic Party entities that she would be the ideal candidate to challenge Brown for the seat that was once occupied by Sen. Edward Kennedy.
So, the financial services companies that were perpetually aghast over Warren's CFPB machinations are now taking their cold revenge by throwing money at Brown – in their minds, Brown is an enemy of their enemy and, thus, their friend. However, this is incredibly stupid on two levels.
First, Warren has never displayed any inkling of wanting to become a candidate for elected office. Her monomaniacal cause was the CFPB, and she has shown no public interest in other issues that shape the current political season.
Warren has acknowledged the political buzz surrounding her potential candidacy, but that's all she has done. Even if she were to throw her hat into the ring, she would be up against several declared candidates for the Democratic nomination, and she would need to raise money from a ground base of zero. Time is not her ally in this race.
But even if Warren did run against Brown, the financial services industry has conveniently forgotten that Brown was actually responsible for giving us Warren and the CFPB: Brown was among three Republican senators who bucked party ranks and joined 57 Democrats in giving the Dodd-Frank Act its Senate passage of 60-39. The Senate rules require 60 votes to stop a filibuster and go forward with a vote by the full Senate. And for those of us that recall the political wrestling match that resulted in the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, Brown was the 60th senator to sign off in favor of the legislation.
If Brown voted against it or even abstained, the Dodd-Frank Act would never have made it to the Senate floor for a vote – and, thus, it would have died on Capitol Hill. Instead, Brown voted for the legislation – and we can thank him for the current regulatory mess that the 2,300-page legislation created.
Of all the candidates jockeying for the 2012 election, Brown is the one person that the financial services industry should not support. Instead, the industry has given him more than $715,000 for his re-election campaign. Really, why didn't the financial services companies donating to the Brown campaign just take their money and flush it down the toilet? They would have received identical results, only faster.
– Phil Hall, editor, Secondary Marketing Executive
(Please address all comments regarding this opinion column to hallp@sme-online.com.)
