Taking On Pete Sessions-- The Clinton Wing Of The Party Makes Its Move... Kind Of

Ed and Hill

Last year the DCCC didn't bother recruiting a candidate in TX-32, Pete Sessions district in the suburbs north of Dallas, including Highland Park, University Park, Richardson, Garland and east to Lake Ray Hubbard and Lavon Lake. The DCCC hasn't paid any attention to Sessions and his district since he beat powerful Democratic incumbent Martin Frost there in 2004. This year, though, there are already 9 Democratic candidates who have declared, including former football star and Obama HUD official Colin Allred (no issues page on his website), Danielle Pellett (sounds liker a Benriecrat), Darrell Rodriguez (sounds liker a Benriecrat), former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer Ed Meier (no issues page on his website), George Rodriguez (no website), Ron Marshall (no issues page on website), Steve Love (website sounds like we're dealing with someone who isn't mentally competent), Todd Maternowski (no issues page on his website) and Awbrey Tyler Hughlett (website indicates a possible crazy person). How does anyone navigate a huge field like this?

Well, David Dayen, helped us figure out something about at least one of these candidates: the Hillary Clinton guy, Ed Meier. The commencement speaker at Medgar Evers College yesterday, Hillary took a swipe at Trump: "I’ve had a few setbacks in my own life... and losing an election is pretty devastating, especially considering who I lost to." Yes, and don't forget what your loss did to the rest of us. Some of her old team are meeting in DC today at a cocktail party to raise money for one of themselves, Meier, for his congressional run. Meier will never get to Pete Sessions unless he can beat Colin Allred in the primary first. The fundraiser is being hosted by Robby Mook, Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan, Tom Nides, Lona Valmoro and Dan Feldman, all Clinton campaign alums.

The high-powered D.C. fundraiser with a mix of political and business leaders may seem discordant, at a time when Democrats are coalescing around a more strident liberal politics. And it suggests that the faction that has maintained an iron grip on Democratic politics for decades does not plan to go away quietly.

...Nides, a Clinton bundler and top executive at Fannie Mae and Morgan Stanley, slid into government service when Clinton served at the State Department. Nides went right back to Morgan Stanley after Clinton left State, but was rumored to be a top candidate for White House chief of staff or another top position in a Clinton White House. Nides helped Bill Clinton sell NAFTA to Congress in the 1990s, and later helped Morgan Stanley fend off more aggressive financial reform in the Dodd-Frank Act.

When Elizabeth Warren, anticipating a Clinton victory, said in a speech last September that the Democratic nominee’s hypothetical White House’s personnel shouldn’t include “Citigroup or Morgan Stanley or BlackRock getting to choose who runs the economy in this country so they can capture our government,” it was widely assumed the Morgan Stanley inclusion was a reference to Tom Nides.

Similarly, it was assumed that Warren’s name-check of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm, was a reference to Mills, a major Clinton confidant who will also co-host Friday’s Meier fundraiser. Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff at the State Department,  has served on BlackRock’s board of directors since October 2013. Observers immediately intuited this as a ploy by Larry Fink, the BlackRock CEO, to insinuate himself into Clinton’s inner circle as part of a bid to become Treasury Secretary. With Trump winning the presidency, Fink took the consolation prize: a seat on the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum, a panel of CEOs who advise the administration on the economy.

In addition to the BlackRock board, Mills now runs her own hedge fund, BlackIvy, which endeavors to build commercial businesses in sub-Saharan Africa. During the campaign, Clinton’s Wall Street reform policies very closely mirrored the preferences of BlackRock and its CEO.

Dan Feldman, one of the other Clinton veterans hosting the Meier fundraiser, is now a partner at the white shoe Washington law firm Akin Gump, where according to the press release announcing his hire he advises “multinational corporations, U.S. trade associations and foreign governments on international business and policy issues.”

These are not exactly abnormal credentials for a D.C. fundraiser. But seeing so many ex-Clinton officials team up on behalf of a congressional candidate, particularly those with deep ties to the financial industry, raises questions about Meier’s views on that critical domestic policy subject.

Meier currently serves as the interim executive director of an non-profit education company called Big Thought, which provides after-school and summer learning programs in the Dallas area. He was a senior advisor to Clinton at the State Department before serving as a policy advisor on the campaign. As co-executive director of the Clinton transition, Meier spent the final months before Election Day focused on staffing a potential Clinton White House.

Bleccchhhh... if that's the kind of crap that all the Resistance energy goes into-- what a damned waste!