Democrat Melvin Watt, first elected in 1992, is a strong liberal who is not hostile to the business community. President Barack Obama in May 2013 nominated Watt to serve as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Read More

Democrat Melvin Watt, first elected in 1992, is a strong liberal who is not hostile to the business community. President Barack Obama in May 2013 nominated Watt to serve as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Watt grew up in a place called Dixie outside Charlotte, in a tin-roofed house with no electricity or running water. His dream was to attend the University of North Carolina, and he was one of the first black students to study there. He had a superb academic record and went on to Yale Law School. He set up a civil rights law practice in Charlotte. He served one term in the state Senate, and then decided not to seek office again until his sons completed high school. He managed Harvey Gantt’s campaigns for city council and mayor in the 1980s and for the U.S. Senate in 1990.

In 1992, Watt decided to run for the 12th District seat. The contest turned out to be the kind of friends-and-neighbors Democratic primary common in the South. Watt won 47% in a four-way race. His base in Charlotte was bigger than those of his rivals, and he made inroads in other counties as well. He won the general election easily.

In the House, Watt’s voting record is among the most liberal of Southern Democrats, and he’s not afraid to go his own way. He was one of just 22 Democrats in March 2012 to vote for a budget modeled after the Simpson-Bowles commission’s deficit-reduction recommendations. “It’s the only thing out there that talked about shared sacrifice,” he later told the Greensboro News & Record. In March 2010, he cast one of just 35 Democratic votes against a massive jobs bill that became law because he considered it “woefully inadequate.” And he cast the only vote in the House against Megan’s Law requiring registration of convicted sex offenders because, he said, individuals ought to be able to get on with their lives once they have paid their debt to society. Watt, whose great-great-grandmother was a Cherokee, threatened to deny housing assistance to the Cherokee Nation after the tribe voted in March 2007 to rescind the tribal citizenship of descendants of African-American slaves.

On Financial Services, Watt was a loyal lieutenant of Massachusetts’ Barney Frank and has performed the same function for California’s Maxine Waters, who succeeded Frank as the panel’s ranking Democrat. Watt has faced a challenge balancing consumer concerns with those of his banker constituents, who have been major contributors to his campaigns. He has strongly defended the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau set up in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial services overhaul law. With fellow North Carolina Democrat Brad Miller, he was able to get anti-predatory lending language into the law in 2010. And he worked with Kansas Democrat Dennis Moore to broker a compromise to allow states to enact tougher rules beyond those of a proposed consumer protection agency.

The bill also landed him in an ethics controversy. Two days after a fundraiser was held for him that included major players in the auto-financing industry, he withdrew an amendment the industry opposed that would have brought it under the jurisdiction of the new consumer watchdog. He said he had done nothing wrong, and several lawmakers came to his defense. The Office of Congressional Ethics looked into whether there was a connection, but closed the case in January 2011. Still angry about the matter, he offered an amendment to an appropriations bill in July to cut the office’s budget by 40%, but it was overwhelmingly rejected.

Watt also serves on the Judiciary Committee, where in 2011 he became the ranking member on the panel’s subcommittee on intellectual property and the Internet. He questioned the motives of some opponents of legislation to fight piracy and counterfeiting on foreign websites, saying some of the critics are profiting from infringement. “The obstinate opposition since the day (the bill was introduced) is really about the bottom line,” he said at a November 2011 hearing. He previously had focused on voting rights and national security matters on the panel.

In the 109th Congress (2005-06), Watt was the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. He led the CBC members in an effort to try to open up a legislative dialogue with President George W. Bush, who then included what appeared to be a couple of the CBC’s proposals in his State of the Union address. But other than on the broadly backed 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act, the two sides reached little common ground. Watt also was a sounding board for Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois in his early stages of considering whether to run for the Democratic nomination for president. Watt initially doubted that the nation would elect a black president, and he backed former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. He later endorsed Obama prior to the North Carolina primary.

Despite the many twists and turns in the 12th District since he was first elected, Watt has shown the ability to endear himself to voters regardless of their race. His toughest reelection contest came in 1998, when the black share of the district’s population had shrunk to 36% and Republicans put up a candidate who attacked him as an “extreme liberal.” Watt won 56%-42%, with support from the district’s many white liberals. He has not been seriously challenged since.

At the time of Watt's nomination to head the FHFA, the agency had been without a permanent director for four years. Its acting director, Ed DeMarco, often was at odds with other Obama administration officials about the extent to which Fannie and Freddie should assist struggling homeowners.