In a letter to State Department deputy legal adviser Richard Visek, she said she would resign from several positions upon confirmation, including serving on the boards of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the institute of politics at Harvard University and a New York City charter school.
While she said she will remain a trustee of several family trusts, she won’t be paid for her work on them.
Husband’s Company
Kennedy said her husband, Edwin Schlossberg, won’t contact the U.S. Embassy in Japan or the Japanese government on behalf of his companies nor any clients. He owns a firm that designs interactive museum exhibitions.
She requested a waiver for her “financial interest” in Austin, Texas-based Freescale Semiconductor Inc., a technology company that has two facilities in Japan.
Kennedy isn’t the wealthiest among Obama’s nominees. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker is worth more than $1.5 billion, according to estimates from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making her one of the richest cabinet officials in U.S. history.
Kennedy joins a host of Obama political supporters in top diplomatic positions. At least 26 of Obama’s current and nominated ambassadors were major Democratic campaign contributors, giving a total of at least $13.6 million to him, the Democratic Party, and congressional candidates, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Kennedy would replace the current envoy in Tokyo, John Roos, a technology lawyer and Obama donor.
The appointment of wealthy allies to embassies with which the U.S. has close relationships goes back decades. Ambassadors make a maximum base salary of $179,700, and the frequent parties and dinners they throw can cost hundreds of thousands more, far more than is covered by their State Department budgets.