Lockhart’s New Job Might Not Be All That New

As White House press secretary, Joe Lockhart’s responsibilities were to snuff out scandal, spin squadrons of skeptical reporters, and--most importantly--stay on the good side of a charismatic but volatile and sometimes reckless boss.

More than a few people in Silicon Valley believe that is perfect training for Lockhart’s new job: running interference for Larry Ellison, the head of software giant Oracle Corp.

Lockhart, 41, was hired last week as “a member of the senior management team reporting directly to Larry Ellison,” according to the company’s news release.

There should be no shortage of image-shaping work for Lockhart at Oracle, a company that so far this year has lost two of its top executives, admitted to hiring detectives to sift through Microsoft Corp. trash and seen its stock price plunge even while it posted record revenue and earnings.

The Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company is one of the most successful high-tech firms ever, but also one of the most tumultuous. And its flamboyant founder, Ellison, craves attention almost as much as he longs to thwart Microsoft Corp. and overtake Bill Gates as the world’s wealthiest man.

“I think it’s a coup for Oracle to have landed Joe Lockhart,” said Ken Wasch, president of the Software and Information Industry Assn. in Washington. “Microsoft has a public relations army around the country. It’s refreshing to see another company hire well-recognized talent.”

But the role the company envisions for Lockhart remains unclear. Neither Lockhart nor any Oracle executives were available to talk about his hiring. The company’s news release said Lockhart “will initially focus on refining and communicating Oracle’s business strategy.”

A company representative, who did not want to be identified, said Lockhart’s hiring was “not specific to public affairs, not lobbying. It’s brand extension, brand development.”

That would seem to be an odd fit for someone who has never been a branding guru, or even held a high-level job in the private sector.

“He’s a pol, he’s not a brand extender,” said one top Washington representative for a Silicon Valley company. “He’s going to be eyes and ears on the ground for Ellison in Washington.”

Vince Sampson, vice president of the Assn. for Competitive Technology, a pro-Microsoft lobbying group, said, “Other than being able to spin well, I don’t see why [Lockhart] would be there.”

Lockhart has spent most of his career in the political press trenches, fielding questions from a podium, planting story ideas in reporters’ ears, and calling network producers in the middle of the night to harangue them for unfavorable coverage.

He worked for the Democratic presidential campaigns of Walter F. Mondale in 1984 and Michael S. Dukakis in 1988, and he was President Clinton’s campaign press secretary in 1996. A Georgetown University graduate, he also has held an assortment of producer-level jobs at television news operations, including CNN and ABC.

But he is best known for his fierce work defending Clinton during the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, and for taking over as White House press secretary in the midst of that media firestorm two months before Clinton’s December 1998 impeachment.

Lockhart had a tough act to follow when he took over from Mike McCurry, who also joined the high-tech industry when he was named chief executive of the political Web site Grassroots.com in November.

McCurry was smooth and glib and rarely caught flat-footed by provocative press questions. Lockhart, agreeably plump and always modestly dressed, seemed unlikely to have the same punch at the podium. But he won grudging respect from many in the press corps, and he gave no ground in defending Clinton.

McCurry, eager not to alienate prominent reporters, “seemed to sometimes think that the press was his client, rather than the president,” said one former White House aide. With Lockhart, “that was never in doubt.”

Though pugnacious, Lockhart sometimes evinced a sense of humor. During Clinton’s impeachment trial, Time magazine wrote that the president “like a weasel . . . emerges from the drainpipe shinier than he went in.” Lockhart sent off a picture of a weasel with a jocular note to the writer.

And despite his importance to the White House, Lockhart never seemed particularly enamored with the trappings of power. His office was adorned with the artwork of his 6-year-old daughter, Clare; Bruce Springsteen is his foremost musical passion.

The rumpled Lockhart will now be working for a boss with decidedly upscale tastes. Ellison, 56, has an Italian fighter jet, races a 78-foot yacht and is building a $40-million replica of a Japanese palace in the Bay Area town of Woodside.

Lockhart, who will split time between Washington and Silicon Valley, may find many similarities between his old boss and his new one. Both grew up in fractured homes and never knew their biological fathers. Both have uncommon quantities of ambition and charisma. Both have self-destructive streaks and well-documented troubles with women. Even their separate scandals have common characters.

One of Ellison’s most embarrassing moments came earlier this year when he was forced to admit that Oracle had hired a private investigations firm to sift through trash to find proof of Microsoft’s secret financial links to three “advocacy groups” supporting the software giant in its antitrust trial.

One of Lockhart’s most embarrassing moments at the White House came after he first denied, and then was forced to admit, that Clinton’s lawyers had hired that same agency, Investigative Group International, to probe certain critics of the president in the Lewinsky scandal.

Many in Washington believe that Lockhart will spend much of his energy advancing Oracle’s agenda in the Microsoft antitrust case. Microsoft has orchestrated a major public relations campaign to generate sympathy in the capital. Oracle is among the companies fighting hardest to ensure the government prevails.

“The Oracle and Sun [Microsystems] and Microsoft fight is still going on,” said a Washington lobbyist for another Silicon Valley company. “You have to have the people that know how to fight those fights. Lockhart is a natural to go and sit on [TV’s] ‘Crossfire’ or ‘Hardball’ and talk about why Oracle thinks Microsoft is evil.”

But others see a more benign role for Lockhart, one that could center on getting Oracle more positive and mundane press.

Oracle has “played a bit on Ellison’s bad-boy image as a forum for public relations,” said Jim Pickrel, an analyst at Chase H&Q; in San Francisco. “Maybe they’re looking to graduate from that.”

Whatever his role, Lockhart is certain to make considerably more than his $125,000 annual salary at the White House. And with Oracle’s stock trading in the mid-$20 range, down from a high of $46.44 in September, the inevitable options the company will bestow could be attractively priced.

Lockhart already has holdings exceeding $700,000, and he dabbles in the stock market, according to disclosure forms made public in late 1999. At the time, he favored high-tech stocks such as America Online, Intel and Microsoft.