From the outset of his political career, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke was bullish about business.
In 1993, when he ran for King County (WA) executive, he told voters he would do everything in his power to ensure that Boeing continued building jets in the area. “We need those kinds of jobs,” he said.
As governor a decade later, Locke could not dissuade Boeing from moving its corporate headquarters to Chicago. But he did push through an unprecedented package of tax breaks which convinced the aerospace maker to assemble its new 787 jetliner in Everett, WA.
Gary F. Locke
The $3.2 billion deal - the biggest public-private partnership in the state’s history - kept an estimated 800 to 1,200 Boeing jobs in Washington. Locke touts it as one of his proudest accomplishments, saying that without it, the company would have eventually moved out of state, taking 70,000 jobs and as many as 20,000 indirect jobs with it.
Not everyone thought it was so great for the taxpayers, though. “That’s $4 million per worker,” complained Seattle Weekly writer Rick Anderson.
Locke’s pro-business approach - whether promoting Boeing, or a publicly financed stadium for the Seattle Seahawks, owned by Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen - earned him high marks from business. It’s the sort of background one has come to expect for a Commerce Secretary whose job, after all, is to promote U.S. business interests.
In Locke’s case, those ties are extensive. Fortune 500 companies and other businesses in Washington gave at least $800,000 to the Democrat’s two campaigns for governor, including at least $500,000 for his easy 2000 re-election, according to an Associated Press review of his campaign finance reports.
Microsoft Corp. and Boeing Co. and their top executives were among his most loyal donors. Several top officials of those companies found their way onto his staff – and visa versa. For instance, Locke’s chief of staff Fred Kiga became a Boeing vice president.
Many of those relationships flourished even after Locke stepped down after his second term in 2005 to head the China Practice division of international law and consulting firm, Davis Wright Tremaine. There, he represented several major corporations doing business in China, including Microsoft.
(He is also a longtime Microsoft investor and reported owning up to $250,000 worth of stock in a financial disclosure statement. An administration spokesman said he planned to divest and step away from matters to which Microsoft is a party.)
Anderson, the Seattle Weekly writer, wondered in a recent column whether someone who had “at times opened the state’s pocketbook to corporations,” conformed to voters’ notion of the “change” Obama had promised during his campaign.
An administration spokesman responded that Locke was chosen Commerce Secretary because of his success in creating jobs in Washington, among other things, by opening up foreign markets to American products and encouraging innovation.
In fact, it is Locke’s experience working with China - one of the U.S. most important, but also difficult trading partners - that likely played the greatest role in Obama’s decision to tap him for the Commerce job.
The first Chinese-American to become a U.S. governor and the first to be commerce secretary, Locke is known for his ties to China, particularly President Hu Jintao.
In April, 2006, he helped arrange a trip by the Chinese president to the state of Washington - including a dinner stop at Bill Gates’ Medina mansion. The only other meetings occurred in the nation’s capitol.
At Davis Wright Tremaine, Locke specialized in China trade and investment.
In a 2006 interview with The Seattle Times, Locke said he flew to China five times a year for the law firm, helping U.S. companies make connections and develop strategies for the China market, as well as assisting Chinese clients establish themselves in the U.S.
He boasted of meeting with China’s top banking regulator to help a “large, multi-national company” navigate Chinese regulations.
“I said we’d love to work with you in finding a creative way to achieve your objectives as well as help this company,” Locke said in the interview, adding, “If you just go to a mid-level bureaucrat, they’re just going to go by the letter of the law and say, ‘no, no, no.’ “
Locke is also a member of the Committee of 100, a national organization of Chinese-Americans, including I.M. Pei and Yo-Yo Ma, founded in 1990 to strengthen the relationship between the U.S. and mainland China, and to encourage the participation of Chinese-Americans in U.S. life.
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