Het Neoliberale Geloof 422

THE INFLUENCE GAME: Commerce Secretary Gary Locke needs no introduction to
corporate America

WASHINGTON - Gary Locke is new to the Commerce Department but already known
to corporate America, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to help
re-elect him as Washington's governor.

His donors included Microsoft and Boeing, two home-state companies that
Locke tried hard to please and whose issues he will almost certainly
encounter as a Cabinet secretary.

Fortune 500 companies and other businesses gave at least $800,000 to the
Democrat's 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. The rest was split between his 1996 race and his 2004
campaign. He ultimately abandoned his third bid and refunded those
donations.

Washington is among several states that let businesses donate to campaigns
for governor. In Locke's 2000 race, they could give him $1,250 each for the
primary and another $1,250 for the general election.

While the state is known for its high-tech industry, a variety of
businesses, including many that lobby in the nation's capital, gave to
Locke: Northwest Airlines; Coca-Cola; grocer Safeway; brewer
Anheuser-Busch; Washington Mutual Bank, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank;
drugmakers Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck & Co., and Schering-Plough;
the AT&T and Verizon telecommunications companies; and Texaco and Tesoro
Petroleum. Enron, a Texas-based energy company that later collapsed in a
fraud scandal, gave $2,000 in November 2001, the month before it filed for
bankruptcy.
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