‘Shark Tank’: Mark Cuban goes after the SEC’s Gensler

Mark Cuban has spent the last decade and a half bashing the Securities and Exchange Commission whenever he’s had the chance.

Now, with the presidential election just weeks away, the billionaire entrepreneur is on a crusade to oust the Wall Street regulator’s leader — even briefly putting his name up as a possible successor.

The Dallas Mavericks minority owner and "Shark Tank" judge — one of Vice President Kamala Harris' highest-profile business backers — has repeatedly suggested that the agency’s hard-charging chair, Gary Gensler, must go, citing his crackdown on cryptocurrencies and supposed fondness for hauling companies into court.

“It’s not a job I will chase,” Cuban, who has invested in several notable crypto ventures over the years, told POLITICO recently. “But if asked, I would want to be interviewed.”

Cuban, who famously beat insider-trading charges levied by the agency more than a decade ago, has since walked back his interest in the SEC chairship, saying he just likes to “troll.” But his initial effort to openly lobby for a job in the administration before the election presages a fight Harris will face should she win the presidency: Will she follow President Joe Biden’s lead and appoint progressive regulators who aim to curb the power of big business? Or will she seek more of an accommodation with Wall Street to reassure investors?

The fight goes beyond the SEC. Cuban’s recent call for Harris to dump Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan drew a rebuke from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who promised “an out-and-out brawl” with billionaires “trying to play footsie with the ticket.”

Yet the conflict is being crystallized at the SEC under Gensler, who has drawn the fury of Wall Street firms after three-and-a-half years of aggressive rulemaking and enforcement actions. Financial reform advocates, meanwhile, are calling for Harris to stay strong with her pick for chair, with some arguing that sticking with Gensler is the best path forward. Cuban, they say, is a nonstarter.

"I do understand why Harris is empowering Mark Cuban. He's famous and he has an incredibly parallel history of how he came to that fame that mimics Donald Trump in a way that allows him to be a pretty good foil," said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project.

Yet, Hauser said, Cuban lacks the “credentials” to do the job, including experience in the law or regulation. Gensler has spent “a lot of time at the intersection of law and securities,” which has allowed him to know the field “in a way that Shark Tank and the NBA salary cap does not.”

"Mark Cuban's palpably not qualified to be a commissioner of the SEC, let alone chair,” Hauser said.

An SEC spokesperson said in a statement that the agency under Gensler "has been one of the most productive Commissions on behalf of issuers and investors since the agency was created 90 years ago."

"The reforms adopted over the last three and a half years enhance efficiency, competition, and investor protection in the U.S. capital markets," the spokesperson said. "The agency's enforcement actions have held wrongdoers accountable and returned billions to harmed investors."

Cuban, 66, is undeterred in targeting Gensler, himself a one-time Goldman Sachs partner.

“I’ve been outspoken about how poorly Gary Gensler is doing his job,” said Cuban in an email. “He is pushing the crypto industry overseas. He is perfecting regulation through litigation, stifling growth in the capital markets, reducing the number of companies going public and going on what seems like witch hunts for big names.”

Plainspoken with a face recognizable across the airwaves — not to mention an estimated net worth of $5.7 billion that eclipses Trump's — Cuban is a powerful proxy for the Harris campaign.

Democrats are looking to build up the vice president's vision for the economy, a paramount issue for voters. And Cuban has emerged as a critical voice of support from the business world, part of an unlikely collection of Harris-backing executives who span the political spectrum. Former UBS Americas Chair and CEO Robert Wolf called him "one of the most respected business entrepreneurs in the country,” adding that his support for Harris "is a huge positive."

But progressives remain unclear where the line is between what Cuban wants from a Harris administration and what Harris plans to do in the White House.

“You don't want people who are engaged and making policy determinations on behalf of the campaign, which they would personally benefit from. I think that’s the danger of him being out there, being so aggressive and really empowered,” said Faiz Shakir, Sen. Bernie Sanders ’ 2020 presidential campaign manager. “I don’t hear anybody [on the campaign] saying, ‘Hey, that’s Mark Cuban’s viewpoint, but that’s not ours.’”

In an email, Cuban said he doesn’t set policy — only provides his thoughts, many of which the Harris campaign doesn’t listen to, he added.

“The one certainty is that [Harris] makes the final call. That is the response I have gotten over and again,” Cuban said. “She has asked for feedback from anyone and everyone. Not just progressives. She has said there would be a Republican in her Cabinet. That’s one of her best qualities. She is not an ideologue.”

Cuban’s fixation on the SEC is the latest salvo in his highly contentious relationship with the top U.S. financial markets regulator. In 2008, the SEC alleged that he used inside information to dump shares in a company called Mamma.com Inc. and avoid nearly $1 million in losses. A jury later acquitted him of the charges after a costly legal battle, which the billionaire claimed was “personal.” And Cuban’s criticisms of the agency have only escalated since.

Shortly after the ruling, he took to “ The Tonight Show " to call out one of the SEC attorneys on his case by name, in what must be one of the only times the regulator has been singled out on the talk show. He has blasted the agency as a “joke” and went so far as to support a long-running campaign to knock back the SEC's in-house courts — a crusade that paid off earlier this year when the Supreme Court backed a constitutionality challenge to the internal tribunals.

Inside the SEC, some officials have joked for years about Chair Cuban as a nightmare scenario, given his attacks on the agency.

“My concern is he may be proceeding with a kind of bitterness,” said Joel Seligman, an SEC historian and law professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

How the Harris campaign is receiving Cuban's overtures is unclear. Cuban said he has not had any direct conversations with the candidate about becoming her SEC chair. The agency, he added, has only come up in conversations with Harris’ team in the context of its handling of the $2 trillion crypto market.

What’s more, Harris could opt to keep Gensler on.

Gensler is confirmed for a term that lasts into 2026. And some Democrats in financial regulatory circles say keeping him on could prove the most likely outcome for Harris, especially if Republicans take the Senate. Confirming a new chair would require a significant amount of political capital that could otherwise go toward higher-profile or vacant positions in her administration.

A campaign spokesperson declined to comment.

Tyler Gellasch, a former SEC official who now leads the Healthy Markets Association, expects Gensler will stay on for at least a little while longer. The SEC chair, he said, has managed to give ordinary investors a seat at the table after years of being ignored in favor of Wall Street giants.

“The SEC’s slogan is ‘We are the investor’s advocate,’” Gellasch said. “But it spent three decades forgetting that, and I think a lot of folks would like the SEC to go back to forgetting.”

Still, Cuban has given some thought to what he’d want to do as chair. And his chief concerns would register with executives across the country — and Republicans, too. They include: the diminished amount of publicly traded companies today, the SEC’s tough handling of the crypto markets and what he calls the agency’s tendency to “litigate to regulate."

“He’s very business-oriented, he understands crypto, he’s been a huge advocate,” said Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith, whose group represents leading crypto firms like Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto division, Coinbase and Ripple. “We would absolutely welcome Mark Cuban as chair of the SEC, if that’s the way Harris wanted to go.”

Brittany Gibson contributed to this report.