Hedge fund lawyer runs for Congress, anti-big banks

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hedge funds are far from popular, but one lawyer thinks Pennsylvania voters will support his calls for banning corporate bailouts, putting an end to "too big to fail" and taking the bulls-eye off fund managers.

Christopher Paige, 38, for the past three years was general counsel for Paige Capital Management, a small New York hedge fund founded by his wife, Michelle, and sister-in-law Jessica. The two women had learned the distressed-debt investing business as analysts for Carl Icahn's Icahn Associates.

Paige, who resides in Skytop, told Reuters he was frustrated by the massive cost of bailing out badly behaving banks, as well as the vilification of hedge funds.

He says longtime lawmakers like Democrat Paul Kanjorski, who has represented the state's 11th District since 1984, bear some responsibility for last year's banking crisis.

"This country really needs help and as the bank bailout showed, Congress lacks financial acumen," said Paige, a lifelong Democrat who switched parties to run as a Republican. "We need a few people down there who know what they're doing."

The district includes the Poconos area and the city of Scranton, a blue collar area with above-average unemployment. Paige says Democrats have a slight edge in voter registration.

The past three years at Paige Capital gave him financial services expertise that is rare on Capitol Hill, he said. Before joining the family business, he earned a law degree and worked for years at Pace Poll, a Pace University think tank that explored community involvement among Americans.

EuroPacific Capital's Peter Schiff, an outspoken money manager who in 2006 warned about an impending financial meltdown, told Reuters in June he was considering a run for senate against Democratic incumbent Christopher Dodd.

Paige hopes to raise campaign cash from hedge funds, although it remains to be seen if his links to the industry will cost him votes.

Hedge funds, he says, have been unfairly blamed for the financial crisis and lumped in with Bernard Madoff, who never ran a hedge fund. Indeed most hedge funds, he said, are small entrepreneurial businesses that Americans would favor over big global banks such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N).

That hands off approach does not extend to the global banks, he said.

The banks are not capitalist institutions. They were created and have been sustained by government subsidies, both explicit and implicit.

"'Too big to fail' should be 'Too big to exist,'" said Paige, who will call for a new rendition of the Sherman Antitrust Act to break up companies and bringing back Glass- Steagall to separate consumer banking from capital market activities.

Paige also wants to focus his campaign on job creation -- something he says can be fostered by cutting government subsidies and curbing intervention -- as well as his opposition to proposals for cutting Medicare.

(Reporting by Joseph A. Giannone; editing by Andre Grenon)