Commerce Secretary is lifelong friend of President

Donald L. Evans is a longtime friend of George W. Bush. He has been the chief executive officer of an oil company for the past 21 years, and as national finance chairman for Bush's campaign, he helped raise $126 million. As Bush's Commerce Secretary, Evans assumes a role that gives him a powerful opportunity to promote industry-friendly policies and to further seal Bush's political fortunes.

All of that might have been enough to spark partisan suspicion during his nomination hearing on Jan. 4 before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. But instead the mood was light, with Democratic members congratulating him while describing their own concerns in areas such as steel imports, fishery regulations, and the census. Evans, 54, declared he had "received nothing but the most gracious kind of welcome" in Washington. He promised to focus on global trade and the export of democratic values. He also vowed to work closely with Congress.

Both parties have adopted a tradition of giving the Commerce Department job to someone who is a close political ally of the President and has close ties to industry. Recent examples are George H.W. Bush's nomination of Robert Mosbacher and Bill Clinton's selection of Ron Brown and William Daley. Evans worked hard to recruit Bush's "Pioneers," a group of fund-raisers who each collected $100,000 for the Bush campaign. Evans' ability to raise money from executives in the energy, high-tech, banking, and telecommunications industries-all of which are to some extent regulated by the Commerce Department-contributed heavily to Bush's fund-raising success.

Bush describes Evans as "my lifelong friend." The friendship began when Evans provided a place for Bush, then struggling to make a living as a novice oilman in Midland, Texas, to wash his clothes and relax. When the inevitable turf fights over trade and technology arise in the Bush Administration, this friendship will boost Evans' clout, according to former Secretary Daley. "There's no one in government closer to the President," he said. And Evans, said Daley, can make friends quickly: "He's a straightforward, decent human being of a type that you don't find in this business, in this town." Daley said he has spoken with Evans many times since the resolution of the bitterly contested presidential election, in which Daley and Evans were on opposing teams. Evans repaid Daley's compliments, saying during his confirmation hearing that Daley "is one who I will seek advice from frequently."

Evans has the management know-how and business experience to help him run the sprawling Commerce Department, with its $8.6 billion budget, 132,000 employees, and myriad tasks: granting patents, managing export curbs, promoting technology development, collecting data, aiding small businesses, and overseeing federal minority contracts. In 1980, Evans became a director, and then CEO, of Tom Brown Inc., an oil and gas company. In the mid-1980s, the company was worth $2 billion, but by the late `80s that figure had fallen to $75 million, and the company had lost all but 50 of its 1,600 employees. Today, its value on Wall Street is $1.2 billion.

Despite the smooth confirmation hearing, a variety of legislators and supporters warn that Evans must be careful not to mix politics and business too much. "One of the most important missions of the Commerce Department is to remain politically neutral," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told Evans at the hearing. "Commerce Secretaries Daley and [Norman Y.] Mineta made great strides ... [after a period of allegations that] seats on foreign trade missions were sold to major donors and that Commerce Department officials were directly involved in political fund raising."

Evans must be most cautious in his dealings with the oil and pharmaceutical industries, which have weak ties to Democrats, said Larry Makinson, senior fellow at the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that tracks connections between political donations and government decisions. "In those industries, the Democrats might attack what is seen as a quid pro quo," he warned.

Daley, however, scoffed at these worries. There's nothing wrong with mixing politics and government, he said, because Evans is a political appointee working for the President. Evans "understands he carries a burden, and he will go out of his way to avoid anything [problematic], because he is an honorable man and has to protect the President," said Daley. His first step, Daley predicted, will be to pick smart, hardworking, and loyal deputies who know where the boundaries lie.

But because the department can wield great political influence, there are plenty of opportunities for controversy. For example, the department's oversight of the census gives it some influence in congressional redistricting. For the past few weeks, state officials in Republican-dominated Utah have been complaining that they unfairly lost out to North Carolina for an extra House seat because of the federal government's decision to include all of the overseas military personnel based in North Carolina in the census count, but not the overseas Mormon missionaries based in Utah. If that seat is switched to Utah, it will likely result in one additional Republican Representative in the closely divided House.