The AP nabs Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) for some too-close-for-comfort arrangements with a campaign advisor — who’s also a lobbyist — and a personal debtor to the lawmaker:
Sen. Maria Cantwell helped arrange more than $11 million in federal money in the past year for projects benefiting clients of a lobbyist who is advising her re-election campaign and still owes her money from a personal loan.Cantwell, a Democrat who is in a tight re-election race, has reported for years that former campaign manager Ron Dotzauer owes her between $15,000 and $50,000 for a personal loan predating her first Senate election in 2000. Dotzauer now runs a lobbying firm.
Cantwell’s money-lending arrangement is the opposite of the traditional “loan” scam, in which a lobbyist or other influence-seeker makes low-interest, long-term or even “forgivable” loans to a lawmaker as a favor, or a way to slip them some cash. (See also Reps. Jim Moran (D-VA), Williiam Jefferson (D-LA).) But Cantwell’s loan to Dotzauer seems to underscore a seemingly inappropriate closeness between the two.