Maxine Waters' Daughter Turns Mom's Campaign into Personal Cash Cow
The daughter of California Congresswoman Maxine Waters will collect more than $200,000 from her mother’s campaign coffers for work related to the 2018 midterm elections, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that payments to Karen Waters are for running a slate mailer operation for Citizens for Waters, her mother’s campaign committee.
The mailers go out to approximately 200,000 voters in Los Angeles with a sample ballot highlighting who Rep. Waters supports, according to Fox News
Among Democratic candidates paying Waters to be included in her slate mailer of endorsed candidates were Governor-elect Gavin Newsom and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose campaigns each forked over $27,000.
FEC filings show for this election cycle, Waters’ campaign to date has paid her daughter’s firm, Progressive Connections, approximately $109,000, and it reported owing an additional $94,000.
Over the past 14 years, her campaign committee, Citizens for Waters, has paid Progressive Connections approximately $750,000 in “professional fees,” The Beacon reported.
Sen. Kamala Harris is a past donor, paying Citizens for Waters $30,000 to appear on the endorsement mailers in 2016 when she ran for Senate, and $28,000 when she ran for California attorney general in 2010.
In 2004, the FEC issued an advisory opinion allowing Karen Waters to run the slate mailer operation for her mother.
The Beacon reported that slate mailers “are fairly common in states such as California and Oregon, but the practice has come under heavy scrutiny.”
According to Fox News, the National Legal and Policy Center filed a complaint with the FEC in July calling for a full audit of Citizens for Waters.
The liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named Waters one of the “most corrupt” members of Congress in 2011.
“In the midst of a national financial catastrophe (following the 2008 stock market crash), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) used her position as a senior member of Congress and member of the House Financial Services Committee to prevail upon Treasury officials to meet with OneUnited Bank,” CREW explained. “She never disclosed that her husband held stock in the bank.”
According to CREW, her husband had also previously served on the board in what is billed as “America’s largest black-owned bank.”
The Washington Examiner reported the bank received $12 million in bailout funds from the federal government.
After a multi-year investigation, the House Ethics Committee ruled Waters did not technically break any rules, but brought to light the congresswoman’s questionable practice of making her grandson, Mikael Moore, her chief of staff.
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