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Political Hay

Once improbably hailed as a rising star in the Democratic Party, Gary Locke is deadly dull.

The narcolepsy-inducing Locke was confirmed by voice vote in the Senate Tuesday.

The fact that the former governor of Washington state is boring might be the reason President Obama selected him as a third choice to be his commerce secretary.

Locke is a tedious, safe choice to succeed President Bush's man at the Commerce Department, the similarly competent but not terribly interesting Carlos Gutierrez.

Boring but competent became politically attractive after two spectacular cabinet-level flameouts.

First, the colorful Democratic governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, had to pull out as nominee because of an embarrassing probe into the awarding of his state's contracts.

Next conservative Sen. Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, who initially was willing to play along, decided he couldn't in good conscience help an ultra-liberal president bankrupt America. Gregg was also alarmed at the White House plan to arrogate to itself control over the decennial Census, which would have had huge ramifications for congressional redistricting. After lawmakers such as Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) denounced the plan as a "naked political power grab," the Obama administration had to assure lawmakers the Census would remain at Commerce.

Since being nominated, Locke hasn't screwed up, and if past behavior is a predictor of future behavior, he probably won't.

Past scandals don't seem to have hurt Locke's image on Capitol Hill.

The New York Times reported that Locke, now an attorney specializing in China-related matters for international law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, came to the post with "a largely scandal-free résumé." That's not exactly true.

Writer Michelle Malkin, who used to cover Locke when she worked for the Seattle Times, says Locke was evasive when confronted about his ties to Clinton-era campaign finance criminal John Huang, a former Democratic fund-raiser and suspected communist Chinese government agent who worked for the Commerce Department. Huang raised a reported $3.4 million for the Democratic National Committee, including from illegal donors overseas. He was convicted of a felony conspiracy charge of breaking campaign finance laws.

While the DNC quickly returned Huang's tainted contributions, Locke held on to the relatively small sums Huang gave his campaign. Malkin says when she tried to get information from Locke's campaign and gubernatorial staffers, they stonewalled.

Malkin wrote earlier this month that on top of Locke's Chinagate entanglements, his

political committee was fined the maximum amount by Washington's campaign finance watchdog for failing to disclose out-of-state New York City Chinatown donors. One of those events was held at NYC's Harmony Palace restaurant, co-owned by Chinese street gang thugs.

And then there were Locke's not-so-squeaky-clean fundraising trips to a Buddhist temple in Redmond, Wash., which netted nearly $14,000 from monks and nuns -- many of whom barely spoke English, couldn't recall donating to Locke, or were out of the country and could never be located. Of the known temple donors identified by the Locke campaign, five gave $1,000 each on July 22, 1996 -- paid in sequentially ordered cashier's checks. State campaign finance investigators failed to track down some of the donors during their probe.