Wisc. Democrat Tammy Baldwin doesn’t disclose potential financial conflict of interest with Wall Street tycoon lover

Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc) has come under fire for her relationship with Wall Street wealth adviser Maria Brisbane. Baldwin has the distinction of being the first openly lesbian senator, and she has been dating Brisbane since 2018. However, because the two are unmarried, Baldwin has been able to skirt the ethics rules of the Senate and not disclose any potential conflicts of interest between her and the Wall Street tycoon.

Baldwin is currently embroiled in a neck-and-neck race for her seat in the Senate. Her Republican opponent, Eric Hovde has called attention to the potentially unethical and opaque financial connections between the two paramours. “Sen. Baldwin’s partner, Maria Brisbane, advises the uber wealthy on industries regulated by Baldwin, creating a massive conflict of interest that merits further investigation. Sen. Baldwin should immediately disclose her partner’s assets and client list – the people of Wisconsin deserve transparency,” a Hovde spokesperson said in a statement.

Brisbane is one of the lead financial officers of the Brisbane Group under the umbrella company of Morgan Stanley. As a rule, all of their clients are private and confidential, so it is impossible to determine if Brisbane works for companies or clients who stand to gain from Congressional action or inaction. Since the two women are unwed, Brisbane is not legally compelled to disclose any information. According to her group’s website, she works with “ultra high net worth clients”.

According to Forbes, her team manages over $1 billion in assets. The minimum account requirement to work with Brisbane was $20 million with a typical client net worth between $40 million and $200 million.

Research shows such ultra wealthy Americans and American companies are even more likely to be heavily involved in politics than moderately wealthy people. “The frequency with which wealthy Americans attend meetings, pay attention to politics, and volunteer for political organizations is about twice as high as the frequency among the merely affluent,” a study from the Institute of Policy Research at Northwestern University stated. If Brisbane is working on behalf of “ultra high net worth clients”, there’s a likelihood those clients may be politically involved, making a potential conflict of interest with Senator Baldwin more probable.

But Sen. Baldwin, who has been known to fear-monger about the security of marriage equality, is hiding behind the rainbow shield. That unwarranted fear about gay marriage led Baldwin to join a bipartisan effort to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, which secures the rights of those gay Americans who are already married. In touting her support for the legislation, Baldwin’s campaign website reads, “When the Supreme Court signaled they weren’t just interested in overturning abortion rights, they were possibly targeting same sex and interracial marriages next, Tammy led the fight for Wisconsinites’ freedoms. The [Respect for Marriage Act] prohibits states from failing to recognize out-of-state marriages based on sex, race or ethnicity.” While there are several personal reasons as to why Baldwin and Brisbane have not married, it seems odd that someone who fears losing the right to marry would not seize it while it is still available—unless there is some financial incentive to remain unmarried.

Afterall, while the two may not be married, they did buy a $1.3 million D.C. penthouse together in 2021. Still, Baldwin does not disclose any of her jointly owned assets on financial-disclosure reports — despite reporting the assets of her previous partner, according to the New York Post.

This questioning of Baldwin’s ethics is not exactly baseless. She has had a history of shady accounting practices during her tenure in the Senate. Last year, a group filed a complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics alleging that Senator Baldwin used tax-payer money to pay for a personal trip in 2020 to visit Maria Brisbane in New York City.

Baldwin at first claimed the trip was official business. But when she was pushed and questioned about it by the media, she reimbursed the federal government for the trip. She simply dismissed the issue as a mistake saying the trip was “mislabeled” as official. However, the ethics complaint from 2023 calls into question many other similar trips to New York City since 2018, the year she began her relationship with Brisbane. “It remains unknown if these trips were also made for personal reasons, and as such, also require investigation,” the complaint states.

When confronted with all of these unethical allegations during a debate with Eric Hovde last week, the only response Baldwin could muster was, “Eric Hovde should stay out of my personal life.” She stopped just shy of calling him homophobic, a tried-and-true tactic to deflect from any criticism, but the implication was definitely there.

Baldwin’s curt rebuttal is reminiscent of a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”.

Feature image: Composite image // Dem. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (left, via U.S. Senate) and Maria Brisbane (right, via Brisbane Group).