Reporting from Washington -- With the White House positioned to reshape the future of the auto industry, Republican Sen. Bob Corker was so concerned about the prospects for his home state of Tennessee that he delivered a personal warning to the administration's point man on the issue.
Don't keep plants open in Ohio and Michigan, which voted for President Obama last year, at the expense of a plant in Tennessee, which is solidly Republican, he said.
"I wanted to know: Would they employ a blue-state, red-state strategy?" Corker said in an interview, recalling his phone conversation last week with Steven Rattner, the administration's top advisor on restructuring the domestic auto industry.
The question illustrates the new dynamic as Obama tries to balance the economic need to salvage a struggling industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people, and affects millions, against the needs of key constituencies and possibly his own reelection hopes.
Like Corker, all sides are attempting to decode messages from the White House.
The administration has sent reassuring signals to the United Auto Workers, a staunch campaign supporter of Obama, amid fears that union members and retirees will be forced to sacrifice more benefits.
By contrast, bondholders who are owed money by General Motors Corp. say they are still waiting to see whether the White House will consider their needs.
Corker would not divulge how Rattner responded to his concerns, saying only that he believed the White House would "try to do the right thing."
But he added that politics could prove unavoidable, given the president's ties to the UAW and his election campaign's reliance on auto-heavy states such as Ohio, Michigan and Indiana.
"The administration owns this now," Corker said. "They've taken over a private company, and in essence you can imagine the kinds of pressures on them as they move ahead."
Rattner did not respond to requests for an interview.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-auto-bailout6-2009apr06,0,1016623,full.story