Rep. Maxine Waters’ (D-Calif.) reelection campaign sent her daughter more than $16,000 in the second quarter of 2022, bringing the total amount of money her daughter has received from her mother’s campaigns since 2003 to more than $1.2 million.
Waters paid Karen Waters $16,500 in June for her assistance with the lawmaker’s reelection campaign, according to campaign finance reports submitted to the Federal Election Commission. The payments, filings indicated that it was made for “slate mailer management costs.”
According to Fox News:
Karen Waters, who runs Progressive Connections, has been planning slate-mailing campaigns for her mother’s reelection bids for the past 20 years.
There is not much information available on the business, which doesn’t appear to have a formal website, and Karen Waters’s LinkedIn profile makes no mention of it.
Slate-mailing is a traditional election technique in California, but it’s uncommon in the majority of other states.
The candidates standing for office in a voter’s area are typically listed on a slate card, also known as a slate mailer or voter guide, along with the policies they support or oppose.
They also provide instructions on how to vote. Such a brochure or handbook is typically produced by a consulting business.
Fox News added “that Rep. Waters, the leader of the House Financial Services Committee, was the sole federal lawmaker to employ a slate-mailer campaign during the general election of 2020. However, the congresswoman is not the only elected official who has over the years given family members money through campaign contributions.”
At least 14 former members of Congress were found to have paid family members more than $15,000 apiece in salary from their reelection campaigns in 2020, according to OpenSecrets, including Representatives Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), Steve King (R-Iowa), Russ Fulcher (R-Idaho), and Conor Lamb (D-Pa.).
However, after paying her daughter more than $187,000 to manage a slate-mailer operation during the 2020 season, Waters, a Democrat, took the lead in campaign expenditures to family members, as reported by OpenSecrets.
By “doing business with firms, politicians, and causes that the influential congresswoman has aided,” the Los Angeles Times claimed in 2004 that Rep. Waters’ family members had earned more than $1 million over the preceding eight years.
Rep. Waters justified the practice at the time by pointing out that her congressional efforts were distinct from her family’s commercial interests.
“They do their business, and I do mine,” she told the paper.
In June 2022, Republican lawmakers introduced the Family Integrity to Reform Elections (FIRE) Act, to outlaw the practice in the face of an ethical controversy surrounding it.
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Sources: Conservativebrief, Foxnews, Opensecrets.org