Elect Gary Locke Governor button.

Bill Richardson said yes, then no. Judd Gregg said yes, then no.

Gary Locke said yes.

Locke, the former two-term Democratic governor of Washington, was named this morning by President Obama to be the new secretary of commerce.

Locke, first elected in 1996, is the nation's only Chinese-American to serve as governor. He was popular with both Democrats and Republicans. As commerce secretary, he will be faced with handling the 2010 census and the conversion to digital television.

The AP's Liz Sidoti reminds us that Locke was "briefly linked to the scandal over foreign contributions to President Bill Clinton's 1996 campaign":

In July 1998, he gave a deposition to the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight about his relationships with questioned Clinton donors. But the committee later said the deposition produced no evidence that Locke knowingly accepted illegal campaign donations.


Locke denied any wrongdoing, and he subsequently returned some checks tied to people implicated in the fundraising scandal, including $750 from John Huang. Huang, a former Commerce Department official, was the Democratic Party's chief fundraiser for the Asian-American population in the 1996 elections, and he became one of the central figures in the national Democratic Party fundraising scandal.

In December 1997, Locke's political committee was fined a maximum $2,500 by state regulators after it admitted breaking campaign finance laws during two out-of-state fundraisers in 1996.

And in March 1998, state investigators cleared Locke of wrongdoing following complaints that he unlawfully took $10,000 in campaign contributions from members of a Buddhist church.

On Tuesday, the Senate, by an 80-17 vote, confirmed Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA) as labor secretary. Still to come: a choice to head up health and human services.

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11:01 - February 25, 2009

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