General Motors CEO Mary Barra has visited the White House eight times since Joe Biden became president. She’s led the auto industry in embracing his electric vehicle agenda. The president has spent years cultivating a tight relationship with her.
“From now until election day, he’s got to err on the side of the worker and the consumer,” said Paul Bledsoe, a former member of President Bill Clinton’s climate task force who now works for the left-leaning Progressive Policy Institute. “That’s just the politics of our time.” Fewer major industries are as aligned with the White House, and fewer executives are as close to the administration as Barra.
As the relationship helped Biden achieve his environmental and manufacturing policy goals, it also gave Barra access to the highest levels of government. Jeff Ricchetti, whose brother Steve Ricchetti is a counselor to Biden, currently lobbies for General Motors. The company has paid his firm over half a million dollars since the start of 2021. Steve Ricchetti himself also lobbied for General Motors between 2001 and 2008, a few years before he became counselor to then-Vice President Biden, and later his chief of staff. Both of them lobbied the Senate for GM while Biden was a senator from Delaware, according to disclosure records.