Well, he’s the kind with the guts to run for the senate seat Max Baucus is vacating. That’s a plus, and at the moment that makes him one of a kind. And he was a classmate of Sen. Charles Schumer, which makes him a classmate of the senator from Wall Street (and a man not ashamed to drop a name).
But he thinks Citizens United was decided rightly. The Montana Street Fighter reports he opposes raising the minimum wage. And Politico reports his banking career had downs as well as ups. One down was in Little Falls, Minnesota (birthplace of Charles Lindbergh), where his story might be entitled Adventures in SubPrimeville:
…his last bank failed only 18 months ago: the Controller of the Currency closed Home Savings of America of Little Falls, Minnesota in February 2012 when Adams was chairman and CEO of the holding company.
The Treasury Department’s Inspector General chalked the failure up to “an aggressive growth strategy” based on adjustable-rate mortgages and poor risk management practices, among other “questionable activities by the management.” The FDIC, acting as the bank’s receiver, could not find a buyer.
“Most of Home Savings’ loans were underwritten based on borrower’s stated income and assets, meaning the borrower’s income and assets were not verified,” according to a government audit.
We don’t know his positions on other issues, such as health care, abortion, energy, and whether to bomb Syria. But I suspect that when all his planks are in place and nailed down, we’ll find he’s a social liberal, an economic conservative, no friend of labor, and not the kind of guy to break the big banks into pieces small enough to fail safely.
I don’t think he’d be the first choice in a Democratic primary. But so far, he’s the only choice in the Democratic primary.