President Barack Obama looks on as his nominee
for Commerce Secretary, former Washington
Gov. Gary Locke, speaks to the press.
(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
It is hard to remember when a single cabinet seat has been as difficult to fill as the one the Obama administration is attempting to plant a warm body in at the Commerce Department. Alas, despite receiving support from places as far afield as The New York Times and two-time GOP Washington state gubernatorial hopeful Dino Rossi, as a result of the White House’s shallow vetting process, former Washington state governor Gary Locke may be destined to become the latest victim of the Curse of Commerce.
The unsatisfying realization, to any who pragmatically wish for nothing less than a White House that is able to operate at a minimum standard of professional efficiency, is that the allegations of unethical behavior or wrongdoing on the part of Locke will not be based on fresh investigation or reporting. Despite the portrayal by many news sources of Locke as a squeaky-clean operator, news ink has been dry for a decade on a slate of substantive claims to the contrary.
Even if the mainstream media is presently choosing to ignore issues that have dogged the former governor, if Locke makes it all the way to Senate confirmation hearings, of particular interest to Republican senators will express their interest in getting on-the-record statements about at least two chapters in Locke’s political career.
Locke’s ties to John Huang. Huang, one of the central players in the Chinagate scandal that plagued the second term of the Clinton Administration, was convicted in 1999 of felony conspiracy for multiple violations of campaign finance laws while working for the Democratic National Committee. He is probably remembered best for organizing the fundraising event at the Hsi Lai Temple in Southern California, an event attended by then-Vice President Al Gore, but Locke’s ties to Huang have also been a matter of record for more than a decade.
Locke’s campaign benefited directly from Huang’s fundraising but, as reported in 1997 by The Seattle Times, at a time when the Democratic National Committee was returning more than $1.6 million in funds raised by Huang, Locke refused to send back any of his thousands of Huang-raised dollars, much of which was generated by out-of-state events either organized or attended by Huang. Because Huang was implicated in a larger effort by Chinese interests to finance American political campaigns and influence decision-making, and the obvious importance of impartiality in the Commerce Department, Locke’s association with Huang raises serious questions.
The Locke-Deloitte-Boeing Connection. In 2004, during his final term as governor, Locke was involved in the decision to pay the consulting firm of Deloitte Consulting $715,000 for a study advising the state on how best to secure an agreement with Boeing to locate the assembly plant for the 7E7 Dreamliner in Washington. According to Rick Anderson, writing for the Seattle Weekly, Deloitte was already on Boeing’s payroll and had received more than $5 million in consulting fees from the aerospace giant in the years preceding the state’s study commission. Even if this glaring indication that a conflict of interest might be present escaped the notice of Locke’s office, Deloitte prominently featured Boeing as a top client in their promotional material. According to the Weekly, Deloitte’s presentation – “Project Blue Sky” – may have been instrumental in prompting Locke to push forward a tax-subsidy plan saving Boeing a possible $3.2 billion over 20 years.
Of course, there is also the nagging issue of the Locke campaign’s own alleged campaign misdeeds. Michelle Malkin, when a columnist at The Seattle Times, broke significant ground in her investigation of a pair of Locke fundraisers held in the summer of 1996 at the Ling Shen Ching Tze Temple in Redmond, Washington. One of the story’s more intriguing and unresolved elements involves $5,000 in cash and a trip to the bank by a member of Locke’s staff to purchase five $1,000 official checks in the names of five separate donors who had varying degrees of recollection about making the cash donations.
(Much of Malkin’s reporting can be accessed via her own website and it is well worth reading thoroughly. Of particular interest are the notes and documentation made during her work stalking the story which concisely define and illustrate a possible attempt to break campaign finance law.)
In truth, though, the real mystery is how the administration’s vetting team was able to miss these controversies surrounding Locke, substantial barriers to confirmation that may end up being the food thrown into the media shark tank as a distraction from the real story. Although tempting for the Obama administration to free up a little bit of time by delegating vetting to the media-at-large, but it creates the appearance that the White House team lacks the administrative skills required for even the most basic backgrounding of candidates. Using the media as the vetting bureau for highest-level federal postings gives the appearance that the Obama White House is either disinterested or unable to perform this crucial task on their own and the result is a messy and time-consuming process that creates a declining incentive for future candidates to agree to commence a confirmation process that is, at best, poses extreme challenges to the finest among us.
The fallout, should Locke’s name fall out of favor in the palace White House, would be similar in effect (although not magnitude) to the mass exhumation of Illinois’ political skeletons that has come in the wake of Obama’s election. Washington, however, is not Chicago. Skill in - and dedication to - the art of smash-mouth politics that still rides shotgun in the Windy City and protects the greater interests of Illinois politicos. The Washington contingent does not possess the same political capital to buy Locke a swift and polite dismissal, therefore the throwing overboard of Locke’s politically-damaged corpus would be accompanied by the piling-on that has become a kind of ‘stop, drop and roll’ standard operating procedure for fire control in the Democratic National Committee handbook. Like Donald Sutherland in the final scene of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Locke will find himself surrounded by familiar faces, all of whom will be screaming for his demise.
Certainly, allegations are not fact, and there exists the possibility that the microscopic scrutiny for which the media is capable would bring forward details to repudiate claims of unethical and dishonorable behavior. However, if there is fire underneath the smoke of any of the allegations, Locke should give serious consideration to withdrawing his name from consideration lest the state of Washington have to pay penance for his cardinal political sins, if they do exist. In doing so, he can do what the Obama administration could not. He can vet himself.
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Comments
So what else is news? He's a political leader.
WHEN ARE SOME OF YOU OBAMA PEOPLE GOING TO START JUMPING ON THE BAND WAGON, SO THAT WE CAN REST ASSURED THAT HE IS A NATURAL BORN AMERICAN, AND NOT A USURPER.
IT SEEMS THAT THIS HAS GONE ON LONG ENOUGH, IF HE HAS NOTHING TO HIDE THEN WHY NOT PROVE IT AND GET ON WITH IT?
I AM VERY CONCERNED THAT HE MAY BE AN MUSLIM ISLAMIC ANTI- AMERICAN AND SO FAR HAS BURIED US FURTHER IN DEBT THAN ANYONE BEFORE EVER HAS, AND HE NOW IS IN A POSITION TO LEARN AMERICA'S MILITARY DEFENSE SYSTEMS....ARENT ANY OF YOU PEOPLE AWAKE, OR ALL BLINDED BY HIS BRILLANT B.S. SPEECHES....REMEMBER, HE HAS "NOT" BEEN VETTED, AND HAS EVERYTHING LOCKED UP AND VAULTED. WHY ?
PLEASE REMEMBER THAT THERE ARE ALWAYS TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY, AND NO BODY SEEMS TO BE FREE TO CHALLENGE HIM ON HIS TRUE CITIZENSHIP, WHICH IS THE OTHER SIDE.
AMERICANS SEEM TO BE BLINDED, AND THAT IS LIKE THE PEID PIPER PLAYING AND RUNNING THE MICE INTO THE RIVER AND DROWNING.
STOP JUST LOOKING AT ONLY THE PALM OF YOUR HAND AND TURN YOUR HAND OVER AND LOOK AT THE BACK OF IT....IT WILL DEFINITELY LOOK MUCH DIFFERENT THAN WHAT YOU ARE ALL SEEING....
The Weekly also reported on Gary Locke's favors for his brother in law, who lived in the governor's mansion - aiding his business, signing a federal loan application, and on and on. The state auditor said the business broke state law!
Locke is a needy liberal who cheated the people of Washington, and was financed by Hong Kong money and shady Chinese gazillionaires. He and his wife fed at the public trough, often taking free vacations spending our money at ritzy-glitzy resorts in the Orient. He was only elected because nobody at that time had looked carefully at King Co. elections dep't. He never could have won all those terms without cheating. The real people of Washington State hated him and his cold, calculating wife, Mona who I understand was the brains in the outfit. He and Brack Obama are perfectly matched. They are both total phonies who have pulled the wool over the eyes of people like you and me, and play the race card when ever they're in trouble. Don't let Locke be confirmed. Recall Obsama!
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