Photograph by Scott Eells/Bloomberg

Representative Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts, at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Charlotte.

A petition drive aimed at nudging Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to  put the ever-fiesty Barney Frank temporarily into the Senate seat vacated by John Kerry’s confirmation as secretary of state ended up collecting close to 10,000 signatures — and won’t be submitted.

John F. Kelley, the Massachusetts resident who launched the petition push with the help of the MoveOn.org liberal advocacy group, gave us an update today on the signatures, but also said he had been advised recently by an aide to Frank, who last year didn’t seek re-election after 32 years in the House, not to pass it along to the Patrick’s office.

Patrick, according to local press reports, didn’t care for Frank’s open declaration in early January that he wanted the governor to pick him, and Kelley said he was told it wouldn’t be “politically expedient” for him to turn in his petitions.

Kelley accepted the political setback with good grace, saying simply of his bid to help out Frank: “It was a valiant effort.”

The Boston Globe reported today that the leading contenders for the interim appointment, which Patrick, a Democrat, is expected to announce tomorrow, include a former top aide, William “Mo” Cowan, and Victoria ­Kennedy, widow of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

The newspaper said that Patrick, the nation’s second-ever black governor, “has suggested he will choose a woman or a person of color to reflect the changing face of politics in Massachusetts.”

Cowan, if he gets the seat, would be the sixth black to serve as a senator since the post-Civil War Reconstruction period ended in the late 1870s. And he would give the Senate two black members at the same time, joining South Carolina Republican Tim Scott, who earlier this month took over the seat that Jim DeMint gave up.

This burst (relatively speaking) of racial diversity in the Senate, if it happens, apparently would be short-lived. Patrick has indicated he will only select someone for the Kerry seat who won’t then seek it in a special election he plans to schedule for June 25.

Scott, named to his seat by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, will hold it for two years, under the state’s laws. He has said he will then run for it in a 2014 special election.

Original post is Barney Frank Senate Petition Push Appears for Naught by Political Capital.

Photograph by Cliff Owen/AP Photo

Retiring Rep. Barney Frank on Capitol Hill on Jan. 3, 2013, prior to the start of the 113th Congress.

Barney Frank broke somewhat with traditional political decorum — such as that is — with his public pitch to fill the Massachusetts Senate seat that will come open upon Democrat John Kerry’s expected confirmation by his colleagues as secretary of state.

“Coach, put me in,” Frank memorably said last week on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show, confirming that he has asked Gov. Deval Patrick to make him the interim appointee until a special election is held later this year to fill Kerry’s seat through the 2014 election.

Frank’s cause now is getting some active public support, courtesy of a petition drive started yesterday by Norfolk, Massachusetts, resident John F. Kelley, 63.

Upon hearing of Frank’s desire to follow his 32-year House career with a brief Senate stint, Kelley told us today that he thought to himself, “There’s got to be something we can do here” to help make that happen.

So, as a member of the MoveOn.org liberal advocacy group, Kelley launched his petition effort through the group’s online platform, SignOn.org. That means the petition will be sent to all Massachusetts MoveOn members, Kelley said.  He also posted his pro-Frank push on his Facebook page.

Kelley, a semi-retired telecom executive, said his effort had garnered about 5,000 signatures as of this afternoon.

Although Kelley was never directly represented by Frank, 72, he said, “I’ve always admired” the lawmaker and believes his experience will come in handy as the new Congress grapples with a raft of fiscal issues. Frank, as chairman a few years back of the House Financial Services Committee, co-authored the bill tightening regulation of the banking industry.

Kelley also is looking for the notoriously pugnacious Frank to offer an effective counter to Republican efforts to cut and privatize programs such as Social Security and Medicare in the debate on reducing the federal deficit.

“I think that’s wrong,” Kelley says flatly.

Patrick’s office had no reaction when asked for comment on the petition drive.

And, of course, it’s technically a moot matter until Kerry actually resigns his seat, which won’t happen until he wins confirmation. Given the snail’s pace with which Congress these days approaches even pressing concerns, Kelley can likely count on an extended period to gather signatures.

Original post is Barney Frank’s Senate Bid Backed by Petition Drive: MoveOn Member by Political Capital.

Photograph by Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg

The Morgan Stanley headquarters in New York.

With Republicans angry about the financial regulations pushed through by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, the securities and investment industry was the only major source of campaign contributions to switch sides in 2012 compared with 2008, giving a record amount of money to Republicans and allied outside groups, led by presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

“What they did was totally uncalled for and totally unbalanced,” said Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat.

In the final three weeks of the campaign, for example, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. employees were the top donors to Romney, a co-founder of the Boston-based private equity firm Bain Capital LLC. After giving Obama $16 million in 2008, Wall Street employees this time gave Romney more than $20 million.

They also backed Republican congressional candidates who challenged such crucial financial institutions as the Federal Reserve and International Monetary Fund, said Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat and former Financial Services Committee chairman.

“It’s really an example of Wall Street letting emotions get in the way of its judgment,” Frank said. “They put the narrowest definition of their own self-interest over things they knew were important.” The result? Reducing tax breaks cherished by the financial community such as capital gains and carried interest may become attractive to those looking to raise revenue from high-earners.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that carried interest is the low-hanging fruit,” said Daniel Crowley, a partner at K&L Gates LLP, which represents JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Wall Street is too important to the economy to be left on the sidelines, though.

“The White House is going to need some level of buy in from Wall Street and the business community to get legislation through Congress,” said Dan Bryant, chairman of the public policy group at Covington and Burling LLP.

For example, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein and president Gary D. Cohn joined other corporate leaders at the White House for meetings to discuss the combination of tax increases and spending cuts due to take effect beginning in January.

The invitations went out even as Goldman employees, Obama’s top industry source of campaign cash in 2008, became Romney’s biggest in 2012, giving more than $1 million.

Also working in Wall Street’s favor are “relationships that have been built up over a long period of time,” said Holly Fechner, a partner at Covington and Burling and a former Senate Democratic aide. “I do think a lot of those relationships are still intact.”

Lawmakers are differentiating between campaigning and governing. “If we stick to the issues, both sides will do well,” said Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who is chairman of the securities, insurance and investment subcommittee.

Former Rep. Ken Bentsen, a Texas Democrat who is now executive vice president of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, said he and his colleagues still visit the Capitol every week to meet with congressional staff members of both parties.

“You want to hear all sides of the argument,” Bentsen said. “That’s the view I’ve seen folks take before the election, and I assume they will take it after the election.”

Original post is Wall Street Hedged No Election Bets by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Republican from Texas, right, and Representative Eric Cantor, a Republican from Virginia, during a news conference following a Republican Conference meeting at the Capitol.

Rep. Barney Frank, who spent two years leading the House Financial Services Committee, says incoming chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas will bring “complete and total irrelevance” to the committee.

“Legislatively, he’s so far out of the mainstream,” Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, told reporters today.

Republican Hensarling is a sharp critic of the financial regulation law enacted in response to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The law is named, in part, after Frank, in part after former Sen. Chris Dodd.

The incoming chairman voted against the $700 billion bank bailout and supported an audit of the Federal Reserve, and told the Dallas Morning News after he was named as committee chairman that he wanted to phase out the government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“As a retiring member of the minority party, Congressman Hensarling considers Mr. Frank’s views far less relevant than he once did and wishes him well in his future endeavors,” said Sarah Rozier, a spokeswoman for the incoming chairman.

Original post is Frank’s Frank Hensarling Talk: `Complete and Total Irrelevance’ by Political Capital.

Scene from the ad featuring Representative Barney Frank in the "Mitt Gets Worse" campaign from the Courage Campaign Super PAC.

A Mitt Romney presidency would represent “a serious setback” for the gay community, Rep. Barney Frank says in a new super-PAC-backed Web video.

“First of all, he might very well re-institute `Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,’” Frank says during a five-minute video that is part of a “Mitt Gets Worse” campaign.

Frank also warns that Romney would shut gay rights out of the courts “for the indefinite future” by appointing Supreme Court justices like Antonin Scalia, who Frank says is “just homophobic.”

Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts, became the first member of Congress to marry a same-sex partner, in July. He is seeking re-election this year after more than 30 years in office, but his approaching retirement hasn’t made him any less outspoken.

“This is a man who has no principles, obviously, on this subject,” Frank says in the video. He says Romney is “willing to trash minority groups and appeal to prejudice against them for political advancement.”

The video is one of six testimonials on the “Mitt Gets Worse”  Web site, which is paid for by super-PACs American Bridge 21^st Century and Courage Campaign SuperPAC.

Romney has said he supports a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. His own Web site, under “Values,” states: “As president, Mitt will not only appoint an Attorney General who will defend the Defense of Marriage Act – a bipartisan law passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton – but he will also champion a Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman.”

Thirty percent of Republicans and 68 percent of Dmocrats believe same-sex marriage should be legal, according to a Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

“Mitt Gets Worse” is a play on the “It Gets Better” campaign, a popular online effort to support and encourage LGBT youth in response to suicides of bullied LGBT teenagers. President Barack Obama appeared in an “It Gets Better” video posted to YouTube in October 2010. That video has been viewed almost 1.4 million times.

Original post is Frank Hits Romney on LGBT Rights by Political Capital.

Photograph by Charly Kurz/laif/Redux

Sanford "Sandy" Weill

Sanford Weill is blowing Washington minds.

The former Citigroup CEO who helped engineer the country’s current financial system in the late ’90s says he now thinks investment banks and commercial banks should be split up.

His change of heart voiced on CNBC this week surprised pundits, banking leaders and lawmakers alike.

Frank Keating, president and CEO of the Washington-based American Bankers Association, said he was “dismayed” by Weill’s suggestion.

“It’s time to push the pause button on flawed proposals that would damage the U.S. economy,” Keating said in a statement today.

Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner and co-founder of Federal Financial Analytics, argued that Weill’s suggestion couldn’t hold water. But first, she called out his about-face.

“Is Sandy Weill Wall Street’s Alfred Nobel, who took his then-untold millions earned by arms trafficking and created an eponymous peace prize?” she wrote in a memo to clients today. “Or is he more like a madam who, recanting profitable sins, heads to a comfortable convent populated by society’s nicest ladies?”

Former Senator Chris Dodd and Representative Barney Frank, after whom the 2010 financial overhaul was named, both criticized Weill’s comments on CNBC. His suggestion is poorly timed and unnecessary given the Dodd-Frank Act’s restrictions on proprietary trading known as the Volcker rule, Frank said yesterday.

Weill’s endorsement of bank breakups was hailed as “good news”  by Senator Sherrod Brown. The Ohio Democrat is having trouble getting traction for a bill he introduced in May that would limit the size of banks.

“People who understand what’s happening with banks realize that these banks are too big to fail, too big to manage and too big to regulate,” Brown said in an interview yesterday.

Senator Robert Corker, Brown’s colleague on the Senate Banking Committee, said overseers’ ability to regulate banks has always been questionable, but Weill’s star power gives his remarks some kick.

“It’s just not possible to regulate in such a way that risk that’s concentrated in this way is mitigated,” the Tennessee Republican said in an interview yesterday. “I think people are looking at a lot of things, stronger capital. But I do think coming from someone like this makes it interesting and probably causes people to focus more on what he’s saying.”

Lawmakers hope to reach a decision on the Volcker rule by the end of the year, so Weill might have to wait a while for another banking overhaul.

Original post is Banking’s Sandy Weill: Latter-Day Nobel Playing with Dynamite? by Political Capital.

Photograph by Gretchen Ertl/The New York Times via Redux

Rep. Barney Frank, center, walks down the aisle with his husband, Jim Ready, during their wedding ceremony in Newton, Mass., on July 7, 2012.

Democrats such as Barney Frank, the retiring congressman from Massachusetts who recently celebrated his wedding with Jim Ready, aren’t the only ones promoting gay marriage as a political cause.

The campaign for ballot measures in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington has drawn backing from Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire, and Cliff Asness, founder of AQR Capital Management, the Financial Times reports.

Dan Loeb, an investor who recently shook up management at Yahoo, and Seth Klarman, founder of Baupost, a private equity group, also have contributed money to Freedom to Marry, a non-profit group working on the legalization of same-sex marriage, the FT reports. They’re also backing American Unity, a super-PAC started by Singer supporting Republican congressional candidates who support marriage equality.

Ken Mehlman, a partner at KKR, the private equity group – and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee – also is backing the same-sex marriage campaign.

“Supporting the right of adults to marry the person that they love is consistent with Republican and conservative principles,” Mehlman told the FT. “A party that ignores reality and demographic change is a party that loses a lot of elections and becomes less relevant.”

Original post is Same-Sex Marriage & Private Equity by Political Capital.

Photograph by Josh Reynolds/AP Photo

Rep. Barney Frank and his partner Jim Ready in Newton, Mass.

Wedding bells rang for Barney Frank this weekend.

The first sitting member of Congress to have a same-sex marriage called for a unique celebration.

Nancy Pelosi dancing to ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man” qualifies as unique.

(And here’s a sign of the political  campaign times: Call up a YouTube of ZZ Top live in Texas and start with a Web-ad by President Barack Obama labeling Republican rival Mitt Romney “outsourcer-in-chief.”)

In the year in which the first sitting president of the United States has voiced personal support for same-sex marriage (it took Bill Clinton years to say he was wrong about opposing it), the marriage of the retiring representative from Massachusetts to longtime partner Jim Ready seems like a bookend of sorts. Or simply another wedding in the first state to recognize such a union?

It’s another milestone that matters to millions of Americans. Money poured into Obama’s campaign when he announced his support for gay marriage, making May 9 one of the top fundraising days of his re-election effort. Federal Election Commission reports show his campaign collected $1.8 million, more than six times as much it did the previous day.

“It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama said in an ABC News interview, portions of which first aired May 9 and was broadcast again May 10. Throughout his first term, he had said, his views on the issue were “evolving.”

Frank, 72, and. Ready, 42, who met at a political fundraiser in 2005, married in Newton, Massachusetts, on the banks of the Charles River in Frank’s congressional district.  Governor Deval Patrick officiated. The guest-list included  Pelosi, Senator John Kerry and Representatives Dennis Kucinich and Steny Hoyer.

Frank and Ready vowed to love one another “on MSNBC or on FOX…”

And “In Congress or in retirement.”

Pelosi, the House minority leader and former speaker from California, took a turn on the reception dance floor with Frank’s best man, Terry Bean.

Original post is Barney Frank Weds, Pelosi Spins to ZZ Top (with `Outsourcer-in-Chief’) by Political Capital.