Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) knows you have questions about her age. Her health. Her ability to lead the House Financial Services Committee if Democrats take control of the chamber after the midterms.
Waters — first elected to Congress in 1990 — says bring it on.
“I am open to evaluation and scrutiny by [anybody] and everybody about my work, my leadership, my energy and my health,” Waters told us in her Rayburn office. “That’s all I can tell you.”
We sat down with the 87-year-old California Democrat on Wednesday to talk through her plan to return as chair if Democrats win the majority. That’s the first challenge.
Seniority. Waters’ pitch to lead the committee comes at a tenuous time for older Democrats.
The party has been going through a reckoning over age since former President Joe Biden’s disastrous reelection campaign. House Democrats ousted three longtime committee leaders at the start of this Congress over concerns about their fitness for the job — a move that would’ve been unheard of in the caucus just a few years before.
The dynamics have been especially charged among members of the powerful Congressional Black Caucus, where leaders have long viewed seniority as a crucial way to preserve the power of minority lawmakers.
Waters said she recognizes that viewpoints have changed. Committee races come down to “your ability to run a good campaign, to raise money, to be articulate on the subject and your relationships with other members of the caucus,” Waters said. “Not just seniority.”
So we asked Waters: Is it time for Democrats to embrace term limits for committee leadership roles? “I don’t think very much about term limits,” Waters replied.
“I allow limits to be talked about by the people. They talk about limits in government, period, at every level of government. That kind of spills over. But I’m not into really thinking a lot about limits for chairs or anything like that.”
There’s a lot of history here. Waters invoked her experience coming up through the CBC and how former leaders talked about seniority.
“Back in the day, if you didn’t have seniority, you couldn’t move ahead,” Waters said. “They told us, you need seniority because you’re never gonna win the beauty contest, OK?”
Financial services. Several other committees have seen longtime Democratic leaders toppled in recent years — but not the Financial Services panel. Waters has served so long it’s far from clear who might succeed her any time soon.
We asked Waters if she anticipated any challengers next year. “I’ve not heard about it,” Waters said. “Have you?” Not yet, we said.
The former HFSC chair also said her progressive record on the committee spoke for itself.
“I had the blessing to work with Barney Frank and some very smart people, and I was on the conference committee during Dodd-Frank,” Waters said. “I’ve learned an awful lot. And there’s an awful lot to learn when you’re working in financial services.”
Retirement. We wanted to know how Waters is thinking about retirement in general. If not soon, when? How would Waters know it was time to go?
“Right now, I am very concerned about the government, period. I’m very concerned about the future of this country if, in fact, the wrong people are heading this country,” Waters said.
We told Waters it sounded like she wasn’t thinking about retirement at all.
“I’m thinking about the future, and I’m thinking about who is in the leadership of the government.” Waters said.
