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Opinion: Clinton campaign mgr. Maggie Williams worked for subprime lender

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Maggie Williams, the new campaign manager for Sen. Hillary Clinton, earned about $200,000 on the board of a Long Island, N.Y., subprime lender that charged prepayment penalties — a practice that Clinton, as a candidate and critic of the subprime industry, now seeks to eliminate.

Williams, who took over the reins of Clinton’s campaign in early February, served as a director on the board of the Woodbury, N.Y.-based Delta Financial Corp. from April 2000 until the firm declared bankruptcy in December last year, according to Securities and Exchange Commission records.

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She was originally recruited by former New York City Deputy Mayor Bill Lynch, a Delta consultant. Her assignments were to create a new code of “best practices,” and to improve the company’s crisis management operation in the wake of state and federal predatory lending probes that resulted in a $12-million company payout to borrowers.

Her hiring coincided with stepped-up Delta outreach efforts in minority communities, where the company made a large number of its loans, an initiative that included parties for homeless children and mortgage seminars in Brooklyn and Queens.

The 53-year-old Williams isn’t the only Clinton campaign insider who made money from an industry that their candidate boss demonizes on the political trail. A month ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Clinton ally and former secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros grossed more than $5 million in stock sales and board compensation from Countrywide Financial, one of the nation’s largest subprime lenders.

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-- Glenn Thrush

Glenn Thrush writes for the Swamp of the Chicago Tribune’s Washington Bureau.

Photo Credit: Associated Press

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