Properly earlier than she entered politics, Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) constructed a profession scrutinizing the monetary trade and vocally advocating for shoppers—a lot in order that the state of California as soon as appointed her to supervise one of many largest banking trade shopper settlements in historical past.
That model turned central to Porter’s profitable campaigns for Congress, the place she ultimately made a nationwide identify for herself skewering banking CEOs throughout hearings. Now, working for U.S. Senate in California, she is as soon as once more promising to struggle for a fairer financial system.
However buried in Porter’s personal private monetary disclosures, nevertheless, is a complication to that credibility: For years, her retirement account has been padded with investments in two corporations which have been ceaselessly and carefully scrutinized for alleged shopper abuses.
In accordance with these official paperwork, Porter owns between $1,000 and $15,000 price of inventory in Capital One. The bank card large has confronted federal complaints over doubtful advertising and marketing techniques and was known as out in 2020 by Porter’s mentor and ally—Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)—for its aggressive and litigious pursuit of comparatively small shopper debt.
Porter additionally owns between $15,000 and $50,000 price of inventory in Berkshire Hathaway. The large conglomerate run by mega-billionaire Warren Buffett contains in its portfolio the nation’s prime vendor of cellular properties and a associated mortgage lender—each of which have confronted scrutiny for discriminatory lending practices.
Each belongings are held inside Porter’s particular person retirement account, not as half of a bigger mutual fund the place many alternative shares are lumped collectively and managed by another person. As a result of they’re in a retirement fund, Porter doubtless intends to carry them for many years to slowly recognize, not money in by enjoying the market.
In accordance with her workplace, Porter has held these belongings inside an IRA for 15 years. Upon taking workplace in 2019, she promised to not purchase or promote any particular person shares whereas in Congress, so she has not touched her investments in Capital One and Berkshire Hathaway in any way.
“Rep. Porter believes that Congressmembers shouldn’t be in a position to purchase or promote shares and has publicly pledged not to take action,” mentioned Jordan Wong, her spokesman. “She entered into Congress with some shares lengthy held in a retirement account and has stored her promise to not contact them. Since becoming a member of Congress, she has solely invested in diversified mutual and index funds—a finest apply beneficial by ethics consultants.”
However these corporations drew scrutiny lengthy earlier than Porter arrived in Congress, and she or he had a prolonged window to dump these shares if she had wished to. Given her intensive experience—she as soon as taught college lessons on the bank card trade and researched debt assortment actions—it’s extremely unlikely she was unaware of the company practices regulators, lawmakers, and the press had been calling out and uncovering.
In 2012, for example, the primary firm ever focused by the Shopper Monetary Safety Bureau—the federal government watchdog envisioned by Warren after the 2008 monetary disaster—was Capital One.
The CFPB charged {that a} contractor for the banking large pressured cardholders into shopping for costly and ineffective further providers, which The New York Occasions known as “one of many monetary trade’s rising revenue facilities and more and more controversial practices.” Capital One finally agreed to pay $210 million in shopper reimbursements and fines in response to the CFPB motion.
Later, in 2015, a ProPublica investigation reported that “no lender sues extra of its clients than Capital One,” and it was the chief in lawsuits by a substantial margin. The corporate took its bank card holders to court docket for owing as little as $1,800; many purchasers had been subjected to wage garnishment, confronted a lien on their properties, or filed for chapter.
On the top of the monetary disaster in 2009—after Porter had acquired Capital One inventory—the corporate hit a excessive mark of 10,000 assortment lawsuits that yr. That occurred to be the yr Porter, then a college professor, took credit score for serving to Congress to go a invoice cracking down on bank card charges.
In 2015, when Berkshire Hathaway’s Clayton Houses was the main target of a bombshell investigation by BuzzFeed Information and The Seattle Occasions, Porter had an extra 4 years to doubtlessly promote the inventory. Their report discovered that Clayton Houses, and its in-house mortgage supplier, “systematically pursues unwitting minority residence consumers and baits them into expensive subprime loans,” inflicting many purchasers to “find yourself shedding their properties, hundreds of {dollars} in down funds, and even land they’d owned outright.”
Porter’s funding in Berkshire Hathaway has noticeably appreciated because it first appeared on her first monetary disclosure in 2017, when it was listed as an asset price between $1,000 and $15,000.
Nonetheless, Porter shouldn’t be the one contender in California’s Senate race to face scrutiny for his or her funding holdings. In 2021, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), bought some $25,000 in inventory in AbbVie, a pharmaceutical firm that had confronted allegations of worth gouging round its arthritis drug, Humira. A Los Angeles Occasions editorial final yr arguing for a inventory buying and selling ban talked about Schiff’s sale of AbbVie as one in every of a number of supporting examples, albeit a smaller one.
Earlier than Schiff’s sale, satirically, Porter had garnered one other spherical of viral fame after grilling AbbVie’s CEO in an Oversight Committee listening to, utilizing her now-trademark whiteboard to dissemble the corporate’s claims it wanted to cost excessive costs to fund drug improvement.
In 2021, Schiff held as a lot as $1.3 million price of inventory, with most of it in managed funds, save for shares of Apple price anyplace from $100,000 to $250,000. Like Porter, Schiff helps a ban on congressional inventory buying and selling, and has been a cosponsor of bipartisan laws to realize that purpose.
Usually, it’s not unusual to see lawmakers put money into corporations they’ve criticized both immediately or by spotlighting sure enterprise practices.
In 2021, Insider reported that over 30 members of Congress or their spouses held inventory in Fb. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), whose spouse owned inventory within the firm, known as for the corporate’s breakup; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has decried Fb and its management, collectively owned as a lot as $50,000 in Fb inventory together with her then-husband.
Kedric Payne, who tracks lawmakers’ inventory exercise on the Marketing campaign Authorized Heart, mentioned that Porter’s holding of financial institution shares “doesn’t stand out to me as being so hypocritical.”
Nonetheless, it’s tough to overstate the extent to which Porter’s political profession has been outlined by her identification as a foe to massive monetary establishments and an ally to shoppers taken benefit of by these establishments.
At Harvard Legislation, Porter studied below Warren, after which turned a tutorial herself, educating lessons on chapter legislation and the monetary trade. In 2012, then-California Lawyer Common Kamala Harris appointed Porter to supervise a part of a $25 billion, multi-state settlement over foreclosures between state AGs and the nation’s greatest mortgage lenders.
When she ran for Congress in 2018 in a Republican district, Democrats’ official marketing campaign arm hailed Porter first as a “shopper advocate” who “has spent ye
ars combating for the middle-class and understands the significance of holding massive firms and banks accountable.”
After her election, Porter joined the Monetary Providers Committee. In hearings, she garnered nationwide consideration for grilling JP Morgan Chase chief govt Jamie Dimon over his firm’s low wages for tellers and caught Wells Fargo’s chief contradicting his personal legal professionals in that financial institution’s fraudulent account scandal. Tales circulated hailing Porter as “the most recent risk to Wall Road.” Reviews described anxious legal professionals prepping their CEO shoppers particularly for Porter’s questions.
When Joe Biden received the presidency, Porter was talked about in information stories as a possible nominee to steer the Shopper Monetary Safety Bureau.
As she runs for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Dianne Feinstein subsequent yr, Porter’s shopper safety bona fides and Warren-style financial populism are key to her distinct enchantment.
In truth, the collapse of California-based Silicon Valley Financial institution in March elevated Porter’s experience and political opinions on finance within the Senate race. Together with Warren, she known as for a repeal of Trump-era financial institution deregulation, which she argued was an enabler of dangerous banking conduct.
“I am calling on Congress to revive commonsense guardrails that preserve company greed in test and restore confidence in our monetary system,” Porter mentioned.