Financial Services Committee loses staff director

{mosads}The move marks the second shakeup at the top of a powerful economic committee. On Thursday, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) announced that that panel’s staff director, Jon Traub, was also leaving for a job in the private sector.

Lavender will be helping steer Bachus through a contentious primary, where he has to fend off several challengers to his seat. Five different candidates have filed to run against him in the primary, including a state senator, president of a county commission and local probate judge, according to The North Jefferson News.

Whoever emerges from the GOP primary is effectively assumed to take the congressional seat in the Republican-leaning district.

Lavender’s tenure coincided with the financial crisis and the heated battle over the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Republicans are currently trying to stifle the law, which they opposed, as Lavender looks to take advantage of his Capitol Hill experience.

“In the next few years, the greatest value that can be delivered to clients in the financial services industries will be in Congressional oversight and in the regulatory implementation of the massive array of legislation adopted in the aftermath of the financial crisis,” he said in a statement.