What do Jared Kushner and Sara Nelson Have in Common?

Textbook Corruption

Corruption comes in many forms, some illegal, some not (yet!). The World Bank succinctly sums up corruption as  “the use of public office for private gain.” Manifestly evil versions, such as bribery, are prohibited. But some bribery-adjacent behaviors remain legal.

For example, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas received rather spectacular “gifts” from billionaire Harlan Crowe, who happens to have had business before the court. This smacks of bribery, but because this isn’t explicitly outlawed for Supreme Court Justices, he’s still enjoying the spoils of his own corruption. 

A Legal but Grossly Unethical Workaround - Favorable Business Dealing

Foreign governments took a cleverer route than Mr. Crowe; they funneled money into Trump Hotels when big decisions that impacted them were on the line, spending millions at Trump properties throughout his presidency. 

A sordid example of this same sort of corruption involves the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which put $2B into an investment fund led by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, after Trump was pushed out of office.

Kushner, you may remember, protected the Saudi crown prince, who almost certainly ordered the murder and dismembering of a Washington Post journalist. Kushner will make millions off of the investment by the Saudis, despite his obvious unfitness for the job. 

Sara Nelson’s Big Transaction

So what does all this have to do with Sara Nelson?

Too much, I’m afraid. 

She may be a small-time bully, with far less reach. But she still wields governmental power–the people’s power–and now she does so in the shadow of a serious financial conflict of interest. 

Paul Roberts at The Seattle Times reports that a big company called the “Seattle Hospitality Group” is spending what is likely a lot of money to buy a controlling stake in Sara Nelson’s brewery business. “Seattle Hospitality Group is an influential member of the Seattle business community with a wide range of business activities across the city.” In her role at council, Nelson “will continue to exert considerable influence over policies that could affect businesses such as Seattle Hospitality Group.” 

That company is hardly apolitical. The Times notes that its president has backed multiple city council candidates, and that the company itself has donated over $16,000 to PACs in recent years. Last year, for instance, they donated to a PAC that supported conservative candidates and other conservative PACs. Those candidates’ wins ushered in Nelson’s presidency on the council.

Now, in Nelson’s defense, she apparently has reached out to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission for guidance. But she did so only after announcing the transaction, and has given no indication that she is hesitating about creating this clear conflict of interest. 

They Pay, She Delivers

Far more important, she is already taking actions that directly aid the financial interests of her buyer.

Publicola reports that Nelson just introduced a bill that would take away minimum wages from gig workers. Not only this, her bill would drastically curtail those workers’ rights and the Office of Labor Standards’ ability to step in and protect those workers from abuse. Doordash was fined by the Office of Labor Standards last year, and they are involved in trying to drive this legislation forward. 

Of particular interest, Doordash delivers food for many of the restaurants that are part of the group buying Nelson’s brewery. The big fee they slapped on purchases in protest of minimum wage laws has presumably hurt Nelson’s buyer (through reduced orders), who now have a financial interest in pushing this legislation through.

So now we have a big company that will make more money if the rule changes, and it happens to get the legislation it wants right around the time it spends big dollars on buying something from Sara Nelson, the council president who put forward that legislation. 

This appears to be a textbook example of “the use of public office for private gain.”

Corruption, or Just Her Usual Bad Ideas?

Now look, I think we all know that Sara Nelson is a conservative: anti-union, anti-worker, against social services and only for taxes if they are regressive. She even opposes drastically increasing voter turnout in local elections by moving them to even years. Her views are reliably right-wing. So it is easy to imagine she might have introduced a bill like this without her conflict of interest.

But now a major piece of her legislation is tied to a huge financial conflict of interest on her part. 

Her buyer has a financial interest in seeing these worker protections crumble. Now they are paying her what is presumably millions right at the time she is pushing through legislation that financially benefits them. 

Did anything about this affect their likelihood of buying, or affect their price? Did it affect her perspective in some way as she drafted the legislation? 

In some sense, these questions are unanswerable–which is why elected officials who aren’t corrupt don’t legislate in the shadow of obvious conflicts of interest.

One way or another, Nelson now joins Kushner and others in the sordid group of people who are wielding state power in ways that favor people spending big bucks on what she is selling in the private market.