Rep. Salazar can’t fund ‘prosperity center’ with congressional salary as wealth jumps

Despite forgoing her $174,000 congressional salary for the last nine months in a so-far unsuccessful attempt to establish an employment center, U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar’s finances improved dramatically since entering Congress in January.

Salazar’s newly filed financial disclosure revealed that stock she owns in a newly public healthcare company, which she promoted on television before entering elected office, skyrocketed in value from $100,000 to $250,000 in 2020 to at least $1 million, and potentially up to $5 million in 2021. A long-distressed mortgage that belonged to Salazar’s ex-husband — but listed her as a debtor — was settled in November 2020 after her ex-husband was told to vacate the property.

And she said a longtime partner, who she declined to name, is still providing for her family despite the ongoing pandemic forcing them to postpone a planned marriage this year. Members of Congress are required to list spousal assets on their yearly financial disclosures but not the assets of unmarried partners.

“I want to get married, and COVID has upended everything. We have to wait a little bit longer on that front,” Salazar said, adding that her partner “helps me” with expenses. “We live together, and people who live together help each other. I have savings, and I can pull from my savings.”

Salazar, a first-term Miami Republican, said she’s working with the House Ethics Committee to find a way to establish a “prosperity center” in Miami that would help constituents find jobs, teach them a trade or help them with getting a federal government contract. Her initial plan, a promise made during her successful run for office last year, was to use her salary to fund the center and hire additional staff to help with employment issues, but the Ethics Committee told her it was an impermissible use of money and staff.

Instead, Salazar says she’s now trying to work with local universities to get the prosperity center off the ground.

“It’s going to happen in the near future, anybody who lives in [District] 27 who wants to come to my prosperity center will know about it,” Salazar said, adding that she plans on using her congressional franking privileges to send mailers advertising the center when it opens.

“That’s the only money I can use because Ethics does not allow me to use any other money if I’m doing it out of my congressional office,” Salazar said.

Salazar represents Florida’s 27th Congressional District, which includes Miami Beach, most of Miami and coastal areas of Miami-Dade County. The district is considered competitive and was won by President Joe Biden in 2020, though by a much smaller margin than 2016 in the face of former President Donald Trump’s strong performance in Miami.

Salazar has no primary opponents and one announced Democratic challenger in 2022: Janelle Perez a co-owner of a Medicare managed care company and LGBTQ activist. Former U.S. Rep. Donna Shalala, who Salazar defeated in 2020, is considering a run for the seat.

Financial gains, and some losses

Before entering Congress in January, Salazar hosted a weekly television show “De Noche Con María Elvira Salazar” — “At Night with María Elvira Salazar” paid for by Cano Health, a primary care provider that mostly works with Medicare and Medicaid patients in Florida and Texas.

Part of her compensation from Cano was 5,000 Class B shares in Cano Health’s parent company, which became a publicly traded company in June. Before entering office, Salazar pegged the value of her Cano shares between $100,000 and $250,000. But the same shares, which Salazar said she has not sold, are now worth between $1 million and $5 million.

“That was part of my compensation when I was on the air. I didn’t know that those shares were going to go up so much,” Salazar said. “I don’t control them. The price is the price. Let’s hope it stays that way and keeps going up.”

Salazar said she was not awarded additional Cano stock since April 2020, when her financial disclosure form filed as a congressional candidate first listed the Cano shares, and December 2020, when she ended her TV show after getting elected to Congress in November.

Members of Congress are required to report the value of assets in liabilities in ranges, making a precise accounting of their net worth impossible.

But while the Cano shares have exploded in value, a separate business venture Salazar invested in prior to entering Congress isn’t doing as well. Salazar was a 50% investor in a Perrine pediatric child care facility called 7 Heaven for Kids PPEC, an acronym that stands for prescribed pediatric extended care.

She’s since dropped her share of the company to 20%, and said she is no longer involved in the child care center’s day-to-day operations. In her 2020 disclosure, her investment in 7 Heaven for Kids was worth between $250,000 and $500,000. In 2021, her disclosure listed the asset as being worth between $15,000 and $50,000.

“Basically, in February, another partner came in so that reduced everyone’s shares in the company,” said Salazar’s attorney, Jason Torchinsky. “The company itself, there’s been virtually no financial activity in it.”

Salazar said the business struggled to attract clients “because of COVID.”

And Salazar’s income for her media work appears to be winding down. After taking in $131,000 from YouTube in 2019, mostly from advertisements on video views, she made $20,000 in 2020 and just $5,300 in 2021.

Salazar said she “hasn’t paid much attention” to her YouTube channel and said someone else is now managing the account. She’s not sure if she’ll continue to make money from her online videos.

Members of Congress are only allowed to earn up to 15% of their yearly congressional salary for work performed outside their official duties. There is no limit on the income a lawmaker can get from investments.

A court fight ends

Since her first run for Congress in 2018, Salazar listed a residential mortgage worth between $1 million and $5 million as a liability on her disclosure forms — a longtime financial burden from a marriage to home builder and designer Renzo Maietto that ended in 2010. But in 2021, the mortgage was no longer listed when a four-year fight in court between U.S. Bank and Maietto ended in November 2020 after he vacated the property in the face of an eviction notice.

Salazar said Maietto agreed to pay the mortgage on the Radcliffe Manor property, a subdivision just outside South Miami, and signed over the deed to her ex-husband. But she remained a debtor on the property, which U.S. Bank acquired for $770,000 in 2019. The liability left her with a negative net worth during her first run for Congress in 2018.

“I’m under the impression that [Maietto] sold it to the bank or that the bank acquired it,” Salazar said. “I do know I’m not on the note anymore so I’m happy about that. It was on me even if I had no say on what we were going to do with that property. So I had all of the liabilities and none of the benefits.”

Maietto and Salazar, who said she hasn’t lived at the Radcliffe Manor house since the divorce, were ordered to leave the property in February 2020, but the eviction was not executed.

“The eviction was not executed due to Renzo Maietto no longer at 7400 SW 72nd Court,” the Miami-Dade Police Department wrote in an eviction notice on November 13, 2020, a week after Salazar was elected to Congress.

Campaign finance violations

Separate from her personal financial situation, Salazar’s campaign was recently admonished by the Federal Elections Commission for misreporting $147,700 in campaign contributions. The campaign contributions from 13 different donors exceeded the $2,900 threshold for the 2022 election cycle, according to an FEC warning letter.

All of the donations in question were earmarked for the 2022 primary election, though Salazar and her attorney said the contributions were not properly split up by the congresswoman’s former treasurer. Individuals are permitted to donate $2,900 to a candidate’s primary and general election campaigns, essentially resulting in a $5,800 limit that must be evenly split.

“The prior compliance accountant didn’t properly classify those donations,” Torchinsky said. “They weren’t, in fact, over the limit but just misapplied.”

Torchinsky and Salazar said the campaign now has a new treasurer and filed a series of amendments with the FEC to rectify the mistake. They said it’s possible that the FEC could issue a fine for the campaign finance violations, but Torchinsky said the fine “could take some time” and that the FEC will likely consider the campaign’s amendments and treasurer change when they decide how big of a punishment to mete out.

“This lady, I don’t want to throw her under the bus, but we don’t control compliance,” Salazar said. “That’s why the FEC is saying this is wrong. It’s a major mess. I’m not happy, and I’ll fix it.”

This story was originally published September 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Rep. Salazar can’t fund ‘prosperity center’ with congressional salary as wealth jumps."