Rep. Maxine Waters, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, is continuing to funnel campaign cash to her daughter, paying her tens of thousands of dollars this year alone, according to reports.
Campaign finance information reviewed by Fox News indicates that the California Democrat has paid daughter Karen Waters roughly $74,000 through the end of September, ahead of the current fiscal year which began Oct. 1.
In the last quarter, the younger Waters was paid more than $20,000, “which is nearly a third of the median American household income in 2020,” Fox News reported, citing Census Bureau figures.
In sum, Waters’ daughter has been paid more than $1.1 million for work on behalf of her mother’s campaigns since 2003. That includes $250,000 from the most recent campaign, according to Federal Election Commission data.
Fox News noted that during the previous election cycle, Karen Waters set up slate-mail operations in a bid to improve her mother’s reelection chances.
“Slate-mailing is an uncommon practice in federal elections, where a consulting firm is hired to create a pamphlet of sorts that contains a list of candidates or policy measures, and advises voters how to cast their ballots,” the network reported.
The California Democrat reportedly was the only candidate to use the technique during the last cycle.
Karen Waters is not the only family member of the family involved in the long-serving California Democrat’s campaigns. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2004 that various other members of the Waters family had also received more than $1 million during the previous eight years for businesses and campaigns linked to Waters.
“They do their business and I do mine. We are not bad people,” she told the Times.
But Waters isn’t the only Democrat to have funneled huge sums of money to family members.
Since 2018, the campaigns of Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota doled out more than $1.7 million to E Street Group, a political consultancy firm owned by her husband, Tim Mynett.
In the first three weeks of July 2020, payments to her husband’s firm totaled about $600,000 despite an FEC complaint having been lodged against her campaign.
The complaint was filed by the conservative National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) in August 2019 alleging that Omar acted in violation of federal election laws by using campaign funds in pursuit of an affair with Mynett. At the time, both of them were married to other people as they first engaged in a romantic relationship.
The complaint focused on travel expenses listed by Omar’s campaign that were paid to E Street Group in April of that year. That timeframe aligned with claims from Mynett’s ex-wife, Beth Mynett, in a divorce filing in which he told her on April 7, 2019, that he was “romantically involved” with the Minnesota Democrat who hails from Somalia.
Beth Mynett said in her filing that her soon-to-be ex-husband’s “more recent travel and long work hours now appear to be more related to his affair with Rep. Omar than with his actual work commitments.”
Omar has also faced other campaign finance woes. In June 2019, a Minnesota campaign finance and disclosure board said the Democratic lawmaker improperly spent thousands of campaign dollars on expenses not related to her campaign while she was still a state legislator. The board ordered her to personally reimburse her campaign for out-of-state travel claimed on joint tax returns for nearly $3,500.
Jon has over 30 years' worth of reporting experience, as well as an author and U.S. Army veteran. He has a BA in political science from Ashford University and an MA in national security studies/intelligence analysis from American Military University.
Comment
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.