Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) is not pleased with the way the chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee is being treated. Gender politics hits financial debate

As if derivatives weren’t hard enough to comprehend— and regulate — add a little gender politics.

That’s what surfaced in last Thursday’s closed-door Democratic Policy Committee meeting when Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) called out the Senate old boys for seeming to brush off the new girl on the financial reform block: Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.).


Resentment had been building already over the fact that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner never met with Lincoln on her derivative bill prior to her markup last week. And as described by two persons in the room, Cantwell served notice that it would be a big political mistake if Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) didn’t alter his package to blend in major portions of Lincoln’s work product.

“It was tough, pointed,” said one observer. “It was about jurisdiction but also gender.”

Monday’s joint announcement by Dodd and Lincoln of agreement on that chapter brought a measure of peace, and the two senators had a pleasant exchange on the floor. But Cantwell forced into the open genuine tension between the two camps over the substance of the regulations — and Lincoln’s new status as a player.

“She’s one tough lady too,” Lincoln told POLITICO. “I think she was feeling a lot of the same sentiments that a lot of us were”

Asked about the treatment of Lincoln, Cantwell singled out Geithner: “The treasury secretary didn’t meet with her until after the bill was passed out of the committee… It’s important to go back and realize that we deregulated the derivatives, preventing the CFDC [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] from doing their job, and a big part of getting this right is to go back and make sure derivatives are properly overseen by that agency.”

“So why someone would skip out, not talking to her about it. It seems to me that would be a mistake.”

“Treasury has been working closely with the Agriculture Committee throughout the process,” said a spokesman for the department. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told POLITICO that he also thought Geithner had erred by not meeting with the chairwoman earlier.

“Absolutely, he should have been up and talked to her,” Reid said. “She’s the chairman of the committee. Absolutely.”

Dodd’s office had no comment, stung by the incident and wanting to move on and focus on the joint letter. But the derivatives chapter remains an area of dispute with Republicans and in some cases Treasury — and may not be so easy to put behind.

“I don’t have any beef with Reid. He’s doing a good job. I have concern about other people,” Cantwell said. “I want to make sure that both committee bills get integrated. It’s not just one committee. You have two bills and you should respect both.”

Cantwell herself has long favored tougher regulations for derivatives; and although not on Senate Agriculture, she was an influence on Lincoln and encouraged her “get tough” regulatory stance. Cantwell also brings her own experience with Congress’s old boy network: She was one of several House Democratic women who lost their seats in 1994 after backing President Clinton’s agenda while their male colleagues often played it safer.

Going home from Congress, she next made millions in the high tech boom, money she used to win a seat in the Senate, where ironically one of the first crises she faces was derivative driven: Enron’s energy-swaps scandal in 2001-2002 and its impact on West Coast states like Washington.

In Lincoln’s case, she had been widely anticipated to play it safe on regulatory reform by producing an industry-friendly bill last week. An earlier draft sent to Banking indicated as much, but she swung left before the markup, producing a bill far stricter than the House-passed version.

In fact, the administration takes some credit for this shift—something she appears to resent. But in any case she now finds herself championing some of the toughest positions taken by her party—going even beyond the so-called Volcker rule espoused by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, an adviser to President Barack Obama.

Her skeptics suggest she has swung with the political currents at home where she faces a primary challenge from the left next month. But she would argue that she’s a “farmer’s daughter” following common sense.

“You know there are some of us really want to tackle this problem and we’ve been working hard to do it," she said Monday night “Although a lot of people think they want to move quickly, they may not want to move too quickly with some of the stuff that we’ve done.”

“We’re getting there,” she said. “Heavens no,” she laughs in mock surprise of any old boy treatment. “You would have to ask someone else that. I’m working very hard to be a good chairman.”