Cantwell, Murray financial disclosures issued
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., had assets worth at least $2.1 million last year, new financial disclosure report shows.
Cantwell’s assets could be worth as much as $10.3 million, depending on the value of her stock in RealNetworks Inc., the once-thriving Internet media company that helped her spend $10 million of her own money for her closely fought 2000 Senate race.
The company’s stock has declined dramatically in recent years, lowering Cantwell’s overall net worth. It closed at $9.18 a share Wednesday – down from nearly $100 a share at the height of the dot-com boom in the late 1990s.
Washington state’s other U.S. senator, Democrat Patty Murray, listed assets ranging from about $32,000 to $130,000. Murray’s totals do not include assets owned by her husband, Rob, an employee at SSA Marine, a Seattle-based transportation services company that operates cargo terminals throughout the world.
The information about the senators’ assets was included in financial disclosures released Wednesday. The reports, which broadly chart senators’ financial holdings but don’t pinpoint their exact net worths, also show senators’ outside sources of income, gifts and travel paid by private interests. Senators earned $162,100 last year, although salaries for leaders were higher.
Murray remains the least wealthy of the four senators from Washington and Oregon. Republican Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon is the wealthiest, with assets ranging from $13 million to $63 million last year.
Cantwell, 47, of Edmonds, Wash., paid off a loan from US Bank worth between $100,001 and $250,000, her report said. The loan is one of several she took to finance her 2000 campaign, in which she narrowly unseated Republican Slade Gorton.
That six-year-old campaign still owes Cantwell about $2 million, a spokeswoman said. Cantwell’s former campaign manager, Ron Dotzauer, owes her between $15,001 and $50,000, the report shows.
Cantwell’s major sources of unearned income include $2,501 to $5,000 in interest from a note receivable from the 2000 Senate campaign.
Murray, 55, of Seattle, reported her Senate salary as her main income.