Rick Larsen had a good week on the Hill. His bill to reauthorize the Northwest Straits Commission cleared the House, marine conservationists presumably cheered, and the press release cycle did its thing. Back in April, though, Larsen had a different kind of busy day: eight stock trades filed on the same date, April 7, 2026, including a purchase of Carrier Global, a company that makes HVAC systems and sits comfortably inside the jurisdiction of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which Larsen also sits on. The calendar is what it is. The filing is public. The committee assignment is public. The receipts are public. Make of them what you make of them.
The Good News Day
Larsen's Northwest Straits Commission bill is exactly the kind of legislation that generates a press release, a handshake photo, and zero controversy. The Northwest Straits Marine Conservation Initiative does real conservation work in Puget Sound. The bill passed. Good for the orcas.
What Larsen's office did not issue a press release about: the eight stock trades he disclosed, all dated April 7, 2026. That's the data Blind Trust tracks. The good news gets the announcement. The trades get the filing.
Social media this week has Larsen pulling attention from two directions. One corner of Bluesky is crediting him for the conservation win. Another corner is considerably less congratulatory, circulating his vote against a war powers resolution on Lebanon alongside other Washington Democrats. These are not people who are going to be swayed by a marine conservation bill. The portfolio disclosures haven't been part of that conversation yet.
Eight Trades, One Day, One Committee
April 7, 2026. Larsen filed eight trades, all in the ,000-5,000 range. Four sales, four purchases. The sales: American Express ($AXP), American Water Works ($AWK), Broadridge Financial Solutions ($BR), Paychex ($PAYX). The purchases: Carrier Global ($CARR), Casey's General Stores ($CASY), NextEra Energy ($NEE), Wabtec ($WAB).
A Democrat clearing out financial sector exposure (American Express, Broadridge, Paychex) and rotating into infrastructure-adjacent names on one day in early April. Draw your own picture.
Here's where it gets interesting, or at minimum where the committee assignment becomes relevant context. Larsen sits on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Carrier Global, which he purchased that day, makes climate control and fire safety systems for buildings and commercial transportation infrastructure. Wabtec, also purchased that day, makes freight rail equipment and locomotive technology. They are companies whose regulatory environment runs through the exact committee Larsen sits on.
Members are required to disclose. They are not required to divest, recuse, abstain, blush, or look up from their phones.
The Carrier Trade Specifically
Carrier Global ($CARR) is the committee overlap trade that sits at the top of Larsen's best performers over the scored period. Thirty-day alpha on that April 7 purchase: plus 11.3 percentage points versus the S&P 500. That's a real number. That's also the best single trade in his disclosed record by alpha.
The committee overlap flag is on this one. Carrier Global's business touches transportation infrastructure. Larsen's committee jurisdiction covers transportation infrastructure. The 30-day alpha is 11.3%. Those three facts coexist in the public record and we are not going to tell you what to do with them.
For what it's worth, his NextEra Energy purchase the same day (also flagged for committee overlap, in the utilities space that touches Transportation and Infrastructure's remit) went the other direction: negative 4.9% alpha over 30 days. So the overlap trades don't all run one way. The Carrier trade ran very well. The NextEra trade did not.
The Full Record Is Not a Highlight Reel
Over his full scored disclosure record on Blind Trust, Larsen is 8 positive out of 20 scored trades, with a mean 30-day alpha of negative 1.4%. That's a losing record by the numbers. Eight wins, twelve losses. The mean is underwater.
The best trades are real: Carrier Global at plus 11.3%, a January sale of Mondelez International at plus 11.0%, a January purchase of Darden Restaurants at plus 7.5%.
The worst trades are also real. The April 7 sale of American Water Works ($AWK) produced negative 16.7% alpha over 30 days. The same-day sale of Broadridge Financial Solutions ($BR) came in at negative 14.6%. A January sale of Verisk Analytics ($VRSK) landed at negative 13.2%. These are trades that moved significantly against him.
The American Water Works sale is also committee-overlap-flagged, this time on the utilities side. He sold it. It then outperformed the market by 16.7 percentage points over the next 30 days. The interpretation of that outcome is yours.
The honest summary: this is not someone printing money in the market. Twelve of twenty scored trades lost to the index. The mean alpha is negative. The Carrier trade is the outlier that raises the eyebrow, not evidence of a pattern of systematic outperformance.
The Floor Votes This Week
Larsen also cast a series of floor votes on May 20-21, 2026, including yes votes on the American Access to Banking Act, the Community Bank Deposit Access Act of 2025, and the Keeping Deposits Local Act. These are banking-sector bills. Larsen's committee is Transportation and Infrastructure, not Financial Services. A floor vote on a banking bill from a Transportation Committee member is a floor vote. It does not carry an oversight angle. He voted with the rest of the chamber on legislation outside his committee jurisdiction. That's just legislating.
The votes worth flagging in the context of his portfolio are the ones touching transportation and infrastructure policy, and there's nothing in the May vote record that maps directly onto his April purchases. The timing gap is six weeks. The portfolio rotation in April predates these votes by over a month.
The April 7 Cluster in Context
Eight trades on one date is notable for volume, not necessarily for pattern. The April 7 cluster happened to catch a volatile market moment. A lot of members filed unusual trade activity around that period. What makes Larsen's April 7 filing worth a second look is the combination: committee-overlap tickers on the buy side, financial sector names on the sell side, and the best single-trade alpha in his scored record sitting in the one stock most connected to his committee's jurisdiction.
The Wabtec purchase ($WAB, freight rail equipment) also overlaps with Transportation Committee territory in an obvious way. It did not make the top alpha list in the data provided, which suggests it didn't run as cleanly as Carrier Global over the 30-day window.
Casey's General Stores ($CASY), also bought April 7, has no committee overlap angle. It's a convenience store chain. Larsen's committee oversees roads and bridges, not gas station sandwiches. The Venn diagram on that one is two non-overlapping circles.
What the Conservation Bill Doesn't Cover
The Northwest Straits Commission reauthorization is a legitimate piece of environmental legislation. It funds local marine conservation committees in northwest Washington. Larsen has been working this bill for a while and it cleared the House. That's the news.
But Blind Trust's job is the other filing. The one that doesn't come with a press release. The disclosure record that sits at blindtrust.io and shows a Washington Democrat buying a transportation infrastructure company on a day when four other stocks got sold, while serving on the committee that writes transportation infrastructure policy.
The conservation bill is good optics. The Carrier Global trade is a different conversation. Both are public record. Only one of them gets the press release.
The receipts are public. Make of them what you make of them.