Cordray defends bureau, silent on political future
CINCINNATI — He shared a stage Monday with labor leaders and elected officials, but Richard Cordray was utterly unenlightening about any political plans he might have.
The director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is one of two prominent Ohio Democrats said to be flirting with a gubernatorial run. Both spent Labor Day with unionists, a vital cog in the party’s coalition.
Talk show host Jerry Springer, a former Cincinnati mayor, was in Cleveland, where he argued for a $15-per-hour minimum wage and that strong labor unions are the best way to mitigate corporate abuses.
Neither man has said whether he plans to join a Democratic field that already includes state Sen. Joe Schiavoni, D-Boardman; Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley; former U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton; and former state Rep. Connie Pillich.
Sutton made news of her own Monday, when U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Toledo, announced her support for her former congressional colleague.
Springer last week told three Democrats in the Ohio legislature that he’s seriously considering a run.
But if Cordray is mulling a run, he’s barred by his day job from even discussing it. Already his Republican critics in Congress are accusing him of violating a law that prohibits executive branch employees from engaging in political activity.
During his speech Monday and afterward with reporters, Cordray again refused to discuss his political future.
“I can’t speak about that today,” he said.
What he did discuss was the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was formed as part of the DoddFrank financial reform law, a measure written to mitigate the abuses that helped cause the 2008 financial meltdown.
“To keep this calamity from happening again, our agency imposed strong consumer protections that prevent lenders from setting people up to fail with mortgages they cannot afford,” Cordray said. “Our rules also protect against the kind of surprises and runarounds that prevented too many people from saving their homes.
“These protections are important steps forward, but they do not erase the damage done to millions of families. The recovery has been uneven and painful, and it may take generations to restore what was lost.”
The bureau also polices credit-card companies, payday lenders and other financial institutions, some of which Cordray said had worsened income inequality in the United States by abusing average people.
In all, Cordray said, the bureau has returned $12 billion to 30 million Americans “who were cheated or mistreated.”
Most recently, the bureau issued a rule prohibiting big banks from using mandatory-arbitration clauses to avoid class-action lawsuits stemming from systemic abuses.
The clampdown on big financial institutions has earned the bureau the enmity of Wall Street and some on Capitol Hill who believe Cordray has too much power to act unilaterally. Many congressional Republicans have talked of closing the bureau since it was created, but the Trump administration quietly shelved such plans after determining that the bureau was too popular with voters in key states, The New York Times reported.
Cordray, 58, is a native of Grove City, and in 1987 he was a five-time champion on the TV game show “Jeopardy!” He’s served as a state representative, Ohio solicitor general, Ohio treasurer and Ohio attorney general.