Though the new regulation would not extend the advisor's explicit fiduciary duty to the brokerage space, it would effectively “harmonize” their regulatory expectations, he asserted.

Despite Waters' displeasure with the best-interest proposal, some note that her impact will be limited due to the fact that Donald Trump will remain president until at least 2020.

“Does the chair of the House Financial Services Committee have some authority? I’d say yes from the bully pulpit point of view, certainly,” said David Tittsworth, counsel in Ropes & Gray’s Washington, D.C., investment management practice. “But absent a full legislative change, and we know who the president is, a statutory change that tells the SEC to do something different is very unlikely.”

“The reality is, no matter the outcome of the mid-term races, President Trump would still have veto power, which would require two-thirds of the House and the Senate to overturn, which is extremely unlikely,” he added.

Still, that doesn’t mean there won’t be a significant change in tone if Waters takes the reins of the Financial Services Committee from current Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas). Her focus has been much more investor centric, which contrasts sharply with Hensarling’s free market ideology. While Hensarling has attempted to dismantle regulation, including some of the Dodd-Frank Act, Waters is an advocate of Dodd-Frank and a supporter of the U.S. Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule, which would have increased protections for investors who roll over IRAs. The rule was gutted in court earlier this year.

“She’s as far left as Jeb is right,” said one veteran lobbyist who requested anonymity. “A lot of business folks don’t like her because she’s pretty left wing, advocates for the poorer people in her district and talks about confronting Republicans in public places. But she has a pretty good financial services staff. They’ll be the folks doing the hard work.”

There is also the matter of an ethics scandal concerning Waters' husband’s investment in a California bank, which still dogs the representative amongst conservatives and on social media.

Waters was cleared of three charges that asserted that she and her grandson improperly used her position to “preserve her husband’s investment in OneUnited Bank,” despite warnings from then House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.). Waters' husband’s investment in the nation’s largest black-owned bank had tumbled from $350,000 to $175,000 after the mortgage banking crash. The Waters investment, which was approximately 15 percent of their net worth in 2010, would have been worthless if Waters hadn’t succeeded, after seeking legislative input from L.A.-based OneUnited, in passing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bill that allowed the Treasury Department to provide OneUnited with $50 million in assistance to cover expected losses from the collapse of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Waters also arranged for meetings between OneUnited executives and key Treasury officials.

Waters did not immediately respond to Financial Advisor Magazine’s request for comment on what her agenda will be if she takes over the committee.

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