President Obama needs a Commerce Secretary nominee who is so clean that he will sail through the vetting process. So Gary Locke...

Gary Locke? I sometimes ride my bicycle past the Buddhist temple in Redmond where he raised illegal campaign contributions. Oh, is alleged to have. Michelle Malkin has a better memory than I because she was here on the Seattle Times' editorial board and dug in Locke's dirt and published columns on his shady practices.

Michelle Malkin :

Now, former Democrat Gov. Gary Locke -- a lawyer for international firm Davis, Wright, and Tremaine who specializes in China -- is rumored to be the next nominee for the post. The MSM is pulling for him. WaPo writes: "Locke is regarded as a safe choice by senior officials in the Obama administration given his long history in public life, his strait-laced reputation and his bipartisan governing credentials." Wishful thinking? Willful cluelessness? Probably a bit of both.

I covered Gary Locke when I worked at the Seattle Times. I dealt with his campaign and gubernatorial staffs. "Strait-laced" is not the adjective I'd use for my dealings with him and his people.

In response to my columns pressing Locke on his close ties to campaign finance crook John Huang, the governor's office first stonewalled. His standard Democrat smokescreen? Play the race card and play the victim.

When I asked what the governor had to say about Huang's guilty plea, Locke's spokesman, Keith Love, responded tersely: "He has no comment and no interest."

This is a most peculiar stonewall of silence.

Though Huang and his wife gave token personal donations to Locke totaling a mere $1,000, Huang is no casual acquaintance of Locke or his out-of-state fund-raising staff. As reported here previously, Huang helped organize May 1996 galas involving Locke at the Mayflower Hotel and Sheraton Carlton in Washington, D.C.; three fund-raisers at restaurants in Los Angeles, and an extravaganza at the Universal City, Calif., Hilton in October 1996 that raised upwards of $30,000.

Gov. Gary Locke's 1996 campaign treasure chest is like a box of chocolates left out in the sun: You never know what kind of sticky mess you're gonna get.

News broke over the weekend that the Internal Revenue Service wants to examine Locke's donor list. That's in addition to a fresh congressional inquiry and three separate probes by the state Public Disclosure Commission (two prompted by this column).
Locke's loyalists imply that scrutiny of his contributors is racist. The claim is as desperate as it is deceitful...

Cross-posted at Economic Freedom - my own blog.