Cantwell Makes Stop At Kaiser Picket Line Democratic Senate Hopeful Wants Bpa To Deny Discounted Power To Smelters

Democratic Senate candidate Maria Cantwell said Wednesday the federal government should take tough steps against Kaiser Aluminum to force an end to the 16-month lockout of its union workers.

Cantwell, whose campaign swing through Spokane took her to a Steelworkers’ picket line, said she would join the call for the Bonneville Power Administration to deny Kaiser smelters discounted federal electricity.

“I think there are major problems there in health and safety violations and environmental violations,” she said. Because of that, the company should be denied discounted power under a proposal by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson that would limit lower rates to “good corporate citizens.”

Kaiser officials oppose Richardson’s plan as vague, although they maintain the smelters could meet any test of good corporate citizenship.

Cantwell suggested the government should go further.

“The government’s investigating Microsoft. I don’t know why they’re not helping to investigate this situation and get it resolved,” she said in a later interview. “What are the consequences if (Charles Hurwitz) depletes that company and its resources and just walks away?”

Hurwitz is the chief executive officer of Maxxam Inc., which owns 63 percent of Kaiser. Hurwitz and Maxxam have been entangled in lawsuits over business decisions and environmental practices.

Cantwell took her campaign bus to the Kaiser Trentwood rolling mill, then to a meeting with seniors at the Corbin Senior Center in north Spokane. In a half-hour meeting that focused on health care, she said she would support a plan to improve prescription drug coverage in Medicare.

She criticized a bill on prescription drugs introduced last month by Republican Sen. Slade Gorton, whom she hopes to challenge in November. Gorton’s bill, the Prescription Drug Fairness Act, would ban drug companies and wholesalers from charging U.S. consumers more than they charge consumers in other countries. It’s a way to address the problem of Americans being forced to travel to Canada or Mexico to buy the same drugs at cheaper rates, he said.

The bill would stop drug companies from sticking Americans with all the costs of research and developing drugs, Gorton said. The bill has been sent to a committee, but has not yet had a hearing.

But Cantwell called Gorton’s bill “a gimmick” that has no co-sponsors and no hope of passing. Seniors would benefit more from having expanded Medicare and a national patients bill of rights, she said.

Cantwell has spent part of May rolling through the state.

A former one-term congresswoman who is on leave from her executive position with RealNetworks, she is running against Insurance Commissioner Deborah Senn for the Democratic nomination.