SPOTLIGHT MEANS SCRUTINY FOR PENNY
LYNN SWEET ON THE CONFIRMATION PROCESS, COVERAGE,
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s pick for commerce secretary, Chicago’s Penny Pritzker, is leaving the world she has dominated for decades — as a business tycoon, civic leader and philanthropist — to become, if confirmed, the storied clan’s first major public official.
“She has always been active on notfor-profit boards, and more recently the Chicago Board of Education,” White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett told me Thursday, a little after Obama announced her appointment in a Rose Garden ceremony.
“She cares deeply about giving back. If not for a president that she respects and knows so well, then when? This felt both the right time and the perfect position.”
Pritzker now is the most public face of a private family, one of the nation’s wealthiest — and most charitable — who vaulted from the business sections to the politics pages as Obama’s 2008 national finance chair. Before that, the Pritzker in the political news had been mainly her younger brother, J.B., who in 1998 lost a Democratic primary House bid.
After the 2008 election, Pritzker was in the running to be commerce secretary, but withdrew her name. The Obama team was concerned about the optics; Obama was going to change how business was done in Washington and installing his billionaire finance chair would be sending the wrong message. Also, Pritzker’s own financial picture was complicated and would have been difficult to untangle.
With Pritzker’s finances streamlined in the past four years — and with her lower profile in the Obama 2012 reelection campaign, with Obama not worried about re-election and with a sense of carving out a unique Pritzker public service role — the time was right.
“She’s charged up,” said David Axelrod, Obama’s former top strategist who was in the Rose Garden for the announcement. “And I don’t think whatever comes in the way of static is on her mind.”
The commerce appointment comes at a price the billionaire Pritzker is willing to pay: extensive financial disclosure and scrutiny by the Senate Commerce, Transportation and Science Committee. No date has been set for her confirma- tion hearings, though a spokesman for Committee Chair Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W-Va.) said Thursday the aim is for “as quick a confirmation process as possible.”
I thought Pritzker would have had to reveal at least a little something about her financial empire in the statement of economic interests she filed with the Cook County clerk last May 1 in connection with her Chicago Board of Education appointment. Turned out, she disclosed nothing.
Instead of listing the identity of any capital asset from which a gain of $5,000 or more was realized — as requested — Pritzker’s reply on the form was that if anyone wanted more information about the family’s “numerous capital assets” they should contact the Pritzker family office. Can’t get away with that again. Pritzker will have two main confirmation issues: the failure of Superior Bank,