In a press release issued today, Safeco CEO Mike McGavick announced that he will resign his post at the end of August.
“This decision allows me to give full consideration to the possibility of public service.”
Uh-huh. Public service. You mean like challenging Sen. Maria Cantwell’s reelection in 2006?
Consider this an official announcement of his candidacy. McGavick wouldn’t be leaving an eight figure a year job if he wasn’t damn well confident he’s going to be the GOP’s anointed nominee. Yeah, that’s right… eight figures.
In 2001, a year his company lost more than $1 billion and laid off 1,200 people, he got paid $10.8 million. Last year, while he was deciding to close that Redmond campus, he raked in another $13.3 million and is now holding almost $25 million more in stock options. Even today, when his company is earning “record profits,” he continues to cut jobs and outsource his IT work overseas (offensively calling it “SmartSource”).
It’s hard to imagine how the Republicans are going to present a multi-millionaire insurance company executive who proudly advocates shipping jobs overseas, as a “man of the people.” But you know they’re going to try.
I hear some righties snidely claim that they’re going to force Cantwell to run on her record. Well I hate to burst their bubble, but McGavick has a record too, and it ain’t gonna look so pretty by the time November, 2006 comes around.
UPDATE:
I’m told that state Attorney General Rob McKenna has endorsed McGavick for senator, though I haven’t seen confirmation yet. So much for my dark horse candidate theory. (Though that doesn’t necessarily mean McKenna wasn’t considering a run.)