Baker mulls retirement, job with trade group

Rep. Richard Baker (R), the longest serving member of Louisiana’s delegation, is considering retiring to head the Managed Funds Association, the trade group representing the lucrative hedge-fund industry.

If he decides to step down, the 11-term veteran would be the 19th Republican to announce plans to leave Congress this year. His retirement also would further weaken the GOP’s chances of regaining control of the House majority, which they lost to Democrats in November 2006.

{mosads}In an interview with the Times-Picayune, Baker said he was in talks with the Managed Funds Association and could decide within “a week or 10 days” whether to take a job as president and chief administrative officer.

“I will make a decision fairly quickly,” Baker, 59, told the paper. “If it doesn’t work out, I am running for re-election.”

Baker disclosed the private sector job negotiations in paperwork filed with the House clerk Friday. A new ethics law passed last year requires members to disclose any discussions about potential outside employment, and Baker said he was the first to comply with it.

If he takes the position, Baker said he would step down by early February.

Baker is a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, which regulates the hedge fund industry, and before Democrats won the majority, he chaired the Capital Markets subcommittee. He lost a contest for the ranking GOP slot on the main panel to a more junior member, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), in December 2006.

Baker has hardly been an ally to the new hedge fund industry, which is facing increasing scrutiny from the IRS and the Security and Exchange Commission for insider trading concerns. In 1999, he authored the Hedge Fund Disclosure Act, which sought to require the investment groups to report to the Federal Reserve Board.

He also has been a strong advocate of investor rights. When the Enron scandal broke, Baker’s subcommittee held the first hearing into the matter, and as other accounting-related abuses came to light, he was instrumental in writing the landmark corporate accountability and market reform legislation, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. That measure included Baker’s proposal for establishing the Fair Fund, a federal restitution fund for defrauded investors.

Baker won reelection with 83 percent of the vote that year. But Republicans may have trouble holding onto the seat. President Bush won the district in 2004 with 59 percent of the vote, but Hurricane Katrina victims moved there in large numbers and have altered the political terrain. His departure would follow that of GOP Louisiana colleague Rep. Bobby Jindal who won the Louisiana gubernatorial race last fall. In December, Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.) also announced that he would not seek an 11th term.