Big Obama campaign donors get ambassadorships -- GOPUSA

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Big Obama campaign donors get ambassadorships
By ROBERT BURNS
Associated Press
June 26, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama on Thursday selected for ambassadorships in Europe two of his presidential campaign's biggest fundraisers, extending a pattern of rewarding political supporters.

Obama chose career foreign service officers to head U.S. embassies in Latvia, Benin and Zimbabwe.

Obama said he will nominate William Eacho, chief executive officer of Carlton Capital Group, a private investment company, to be ambassador to Austria. Eacho raised more than $500,000 for Obama's presidential run; he and his immediate family also donated $226,000 to federal politics in 2007-08, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.

Bruce Oreck, a lawyer who raised more than $500,000 for the Obama campaign and with his family gave $202,000 to federal races, according to the center, was chosen to be ambassador to Finland. He had been vice president and general counsel for his family business, the Oreck vacuum manufacturer, until it was sold in 2003.

And Obama picked finance executive and Democratic donor David Thorne to be ambassador to Italy. Thorne contributed a total of $3,300 to Obama's primary and general election campaigns last year, according to the money-tracking group.

In a series of announcements earlier this month, Obama picked campaign fundraisers and donors for plum posts in Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Morocco, Belize, Canada, the Bahamas and South Africa. He also has named numerous career foreign service officers to postings in Europe, Africa, the Mideast and the Pacific.

The White House said Thursday that Obama intends to nominate Judith G. Garber, a career foreign service officer who currently is deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, to be ambassador to Latvia.

James Knight, a career foreign service officer and director of the State Department's office of East African affairs, is to be nominated to be ambassador to Benin.

Obama's choice to be ambassador to Zimbabwe is Charles A. Ray, who has headed the Pentagon's POW/MIA affairs office since 2006 and is a career foreign service officer.

To represent Washington at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Obama chose Karen Kornbluh, who had been policy director in his Senate office. She is now a visiting fellow at the Center for American Progress, a think tank that has been a frequent source of personnel to fill senior Obama administration jobs.

David Killion, a senior member of the professional staff of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was picked to lead the U.S. mission at the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO. As an adviser on U.N. issues to the late Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., Killion worked on the legislation that was passed in 2001 authorizing U.S. re-entry to UNESCO.