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After three terms in the U.S. House and two unsuccessful campaigns for the U.S. Senate, Colin Allred said he\u2019s heard plenty about voters\u2019 suspicions that politicians are just\u00a0trying to make a buck\u00a0in Washington.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2019What about the stock trading in Congress? What about people getting rich in Congress?\u2019\u201d Allred said they ask him regularly. \u201cAnd I have to say to them, you\u2019re absolutely right about that, too. We need to be better.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s challenging Rep. Julie Johnson in the Democratic runoff for a Dallas-area House seat on Tuesday, and he\u2019s one of several candidates trying to harness populist anger over congressional stock trading. Allred has denounced Johnson for trades involving companies like Palantir, a data analytics firm with ties to President Donald Trump\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n
Johnson said her trades were handled by a financial manager, and she accused Allred of being \u201conly out for himself.\u201d She pointed to financial disclosures that showed Allred\u2019s wealth nearly doubling during his own time in Congress, although Allred said his assets were in a blind trust and the money came from his wife\u2019s income as a partner at a law firm.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be clear, the sum total I made on that trade was only $90,\u201d Johnson said of her Palantir stock. \u201cMy opponent is trying to make it seem like it was hundreds or thousands.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bitter campaign is emblematic of broader debates within the Democratic Party over the role of money in politics. Long a refrain of strident progressives and good-government reformers, accusations that political rivals are self-dealing or bought by special interests have become a mainstay of Democratic primaries. The heightened criticism of lawmakers\u2019 personal wealth comes as the party looks to\u00a0sharpen its anti-corruption message against Trump\u00a0and to develop\u00a0a platform for overhauling Washington\u00a0if Democrats take power in the midterms.<\/p>\n
Some are tracking congressional stock trading<\/p>\n
Trump campaigned on a promise to \u201cdrain the swamp,\u201d capitalizing on Americans\u2019 disdain for the Washington establishment. Now that\u00a0his family is profiting\u00a0while he\u2019s back in the White House, Democrats are eager to regain the upper hand on an issue that could prove potent with voters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe difficulty is that right now, no party has the mantle on anti-corruption,\u201d said Daniel Lobo-Lewis, a political consultant in Washington. \u201cMany voters outside of the beltway see both parties as corrupt, because they see all politicians as bought by the donors or by their own self-interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lobo-Lewis and Nico Agosto founded the Political Integrity Project last year to track stock trading and corporate donations involving members of Congress.<\/p>\n
The organization asks candidates to sign an \u201cintegrity pledge\u201d to refrain from trading stocks or accepting corporate donations while in Congress and vow not to work as a lobbyist after they leave office. So far, about 90 challengers and seven sitting lawmakers have taken the pledge, all of whom are Democrats.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we want to, in any way, start rebuilding trust in our political institutions, it starts with no-brainer changes like this that have an approval rating above and beyond any other issue you could imagine,\u201d Lobo-Lewis said.<\/p>\n
Congress has yet to enact a stock trading ban for its members, though insider trading is already illegal. for members just like it is for anyone else. There are multiple proposals on Capitol Hill but none have gained traction.<\/p>\n
A bipartisan bill to ban congressional stock trading stalled this year despite receiving Trump\u2019s blessing during his State of the Union. And Democrats remain divided over the number of alleged loopholes in their competing proposals.<\/p>\n
Anti-corruption messages spread in Democratic primaries<\/p>\n
A crowded race\u00a0in a Democratic-leaning Utah congressional seat has featured attacks over candidates\u2019 personal wealth. State Sen. Nate Blouin criticized his main rival, former Rep. Ben McAdams, for having equity in a Utah data center firm, and excoriated others in the race for past investments and jobs.<\/p>\n
McAdams said the equity of several thousand dollars was payment for a past contract completed by his government consulting firm while he was a private citizen. His campaign defended the data center project by saying it would use no water and run on clean energy.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for McAdams also claimed Blouin \u201cis currently hiding his corporate donations\u201d by removing them from campaign disclosure reports, which McAdams\u2019 campaign claims \u201cis not only deceitful, it breaks campaign finance law.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an interview, Blouin rejected the claim that he broke the law, and said that he removed the donations because he returned the money to each donor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was actually quite uncomfortable to return some of those,\u201d said Blouin, because some of the firms included local firms and clean energy companies. \u201cBut there is a perception that campaign contributions from lobbyists and companies influence votes, and I think there is some truth to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a New York City congressional district that includes both Wall Street and the Democratic Socialists of America\u2019s headquarters, the city\u2019s former comptroller, Brad Lander, has accused Rep. Dan Goldman of trying to buy another term by using his own wealth to match campaign contributions. Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss family fortune, says he entered all of his assets into a blind trust after taking office in 2023.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Goldman said Lander is \u201crunning a deceitful campaign based on absurd lies that Dan is beholden to special interests\u201d and that Goldman has raised more campaign funds than Lander \u201cwithout taking a dime of corporate PAC money.\u201d Goldman has spent his own money on the race, the spokesperson said, \u201cto ensure that the NY-10 voters can be sure that he is beholden only to them and his principles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lander said Goldman\u2019s spending is \u201cnot illegal, but it is certainly anti-democratic when a quarter-billionaire like Dan Goldman not only dumps millions of his own inherited wealth into his elections but also solicits money from the same forces who are rigging the economy and worsening the affordability crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
More candidates are fighting over stocks in California<\/p>\n
Even representatives who support a ban on congressional stock trading are feeling the heat.<\/p>\n
Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman of California is facing multiple primary challengers who have criticized the congressman for holding stocks while serving in Congress. Sherman does not trade individual stocks and supports a ban on stock trading.<\/p>\n
\u201cI only own three individual stocks which I inherited from my mother when she passed away, which were originally acquired by my grandmother,\u201d Sherman said. \u201cI have never sold them because I made a promise to my constituents that I would not buy and sell individual stocks.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of Sherman\u2019s primary challengers is Jake Levine, a former climate adviser to President Joe Biden, who signed the pledge from the Political Integrity Project. But Sherman said Levine \u201crefuses to disclose key elements of his $18 million stock portfolio, and actively bought and sold stocks while serving on the National Security Council.\u201d Levine has said he cannot disclose the portfolio because it is managed by his family and he has no oversight.<\/p>\n
In the race to succeed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California State Sen. Scott Wiener has critiqued his progressive opponent, Saikat Chakrabarti, over his personal wealth. Chakrabarti is a former software engineer who earned millions as an early employee at the tech firm Stripe. He later served as the first chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.<\/p>\n
Wiener said that Chakrabarti \u201chas enormous investments\u201d and \u201cis trying to buy this seat\u201d while \u201cspreading bogus conspiracy theories\u201d with his own wealth. He criticized Chakrabarti for not disclosing the last decade of his stock trades.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re making a ban on stock trades a central part of your campaign \u2014 as Saikat is doing, running around saying that everyone under the sun is corrupt \u2014 how about you tell the voters about your own stock trading history,\u201d Wiener said.<\/p>\n
Chakrabarti retorted that his wealth as a private citizen is not relevant to his future time in office and that he would put all of his assets into a blind trust should he be elected. He critiqued Wiener for being supported by super PACs funded by the AI firm Anthropic and other major corporations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is all part of a larger problem, which is just the whole idea of corruption in our politics,\u201d Chakrabarti said. \u201cIf you\u2019re in Congress, you sit on committees that oversee a lot of these industries, and it\u2019s unethical to be using that insider information, that knowledge to make stock trades. But that doesn\u2019t apply to a private citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n
#Democrats #run #corruption #stock #trades<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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