subject: How will the elections impact the foreclosure crisis? [print this page] How will the elections impact the foreclosure crisis?
In the wake of a foreclosure-documentation scandal that has grabbed headlines for more than a month, Elizabeth Warren, who's leading the Obama administration's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said, "Right now my money is on the attorneys general [1]," who in October launched a joint investigation in all 50 states.
Midterm elections, however, could present a complication for that investigation, given that 30 state attorneys general races are being decided today [2]. As the Washington Independent reported, some of the state attorneys general who've been most active in the investigation [3] are either engaged in close re-election contests or are set to leave their posts. More from the Independent:
Consider this: Of the 12 state attorneys general on the executive committee of the coordinated investigation, only two of them Roy Cooper in North Carolina and Rob McKenna in Washington aren't up for re-election this year. Several of them Jerry Brown in California, Richard Blumenthal in Connecticut, Terry Goddard in Arizona, Andrew Cuomo in New York and Bill McCollum in Florida are running for higher office and will not return to their posts. And other races are closely contested.
Currently, 32 of the 50 attorneys general across the nation are Democrats, to 18 Republicans. According to Governing Magazine, the GOP is poised to pick up anywhere from six to 13 of those seats after November, dramatically changing the makeup of the attorneys general across the country and potentially the nature of their investigation.
Two notable cases include Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray and Iowa attorney general Tom Miller, both of whom are up for re-election today [4] and are members of the executive committee that is leading the probe.
Miller, who has tracked mortgage-industry practices for years [5], is the investigation's point man [6]. And Cordray is the only attorney general so far to have filed a lawsuit against a servicerGMACfor its foreclosure practices. The Ohio Democrat has promised that the foreclosure probe will continue past the elections [7], but he's currently locked in a race that Governing magazine is still calling a toss-up [8].
