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.

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.

-- Glenn Thrush

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

Photo Credit: Associated Press