Congress recently appointed a new ambassador to the European Union: Pacific Northwest hotel magnate Gordon Sondland.
He’s a Seattle native, and his company, Provenance Hotels, owns and manages hotels throughout the U.S., including Hotel deLuxe, Hotel Lucia, Sentinel, Dossier and Heathman Hotel in Portland.
Sondland has extensive business experience, but no diplomatic track record. And he’s stepping into the fray of an increasingly fraught period of U.S.-EU relations.
David Herszenhorn, the chief Brussels correspondent for Politico EU, has been closely following Sondland's confirmation.
Herszenhorn told OPB "Weekend Edition" host John Notarianni that Sondland has a different style than President Trump, but the ambassador has deep GOP roots.
“He’s not your traditional Trump guy. We see that his hotels don’t have his named slapped all over them,” Herszenhorn said. “But he takes a little bit of umbrage at the suggestion he got the job just because he wrote a big check. What he’s been doing for many years is writing many, many checks, helping establishment Republican candidates get elected.”
Herszenhorn said Sondland’s personal story could give him extra credibility with diplomats at the EU's headquarters in Brussels.
“His parents were survivors of World War II,” the journalist said. “They escaped Nazi Germany. Just the fact that his family knows that history of Europe — that the EU was born out of the bloodshed of World War II — will carry a lot of weight in Brussels."
Herszenhorn acknowledged that Sondland is walking into an especially difficult job, working for a president who’s prone to offering his own policy proclamations without consulting his staff.
“The Europeans have figured out that nobody quite speaks for this president,” Herszenhorn said. “Even the secretary of state can’t quite speak for the president of the United States."
Still, the ambassadorship has been empty for 20 months, and Herszenhorn said just having someone in Brussels for EU officials to talk to will be a big improvement.
“There’s a lot of traditional diplomacy that still happens in Brussels,” he said. “There are a lot of places where Sondland can be present and carrying the U.S. message, whether that's pushing for the reduction of tariffs, new trade relationships, or pushing for increased military spending by allies.”
Use the audio player above to hear the full conversation from OPB’s “Weekend Edition.”
