Ex-Quarterback Thrives as Lobbyist ... “first African-American” owner for a John Deere dealership (with a South Korean) ... meanwhile ...

Ex-Quarterback Thrives as Lobbyist | By BARRY MEIER | Published: November 11, 2006

Around the time that the John Deere Company hired the former Oklahoma representative J. C. Watts Jr. as a lobbyist two years ago, it also handed him an important mission.

Mr. Watts, the conservative Republican superstar, was asked to find black businessmen and women to become John Deere dealers after a lawsuit stated that there was not a single one among the roughly 1,400 dealers nationwide that sold its trademark green-and-yellow tractors and riding mowers.

This May, executives at Mr. Watts’s lobbying and consulting firm in Washington announced that after a lengthy search, they had found the “first African-American” owner for a John Deere dealership. That dealer’s name: the J. C. Watts Companies.

“I am proud to join the John Deere team,” Mr. Watts said in a news release about his firm’s purchase of two small dealerships in Texas.
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Now as a lobbyist, he has shown a similar deftness — as the case of John Deere suggests — for turning his lobbying assignments into business deals for himself and his clients.

As it turns out, for example, Mr. Watts’s principal partner in his Deere dealerships is not African-American, nor is he even an American.

Instead, he is a South Korean businessman who, until recently, was paying Mr. Watts’s firm to help him win construction work at a United States military base in that country.

That businessman, Keum Sang-yeon, did not end up with military work. But he agreed last year to join Mr. Watts in buying the Deere outlets in Texas, putting up $2 million of the $4 million price, an executive of one of his companies said in an interview.
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John Deere’s search for a black dealer began not long after the company was sued in late 2003 by a retired black employee who had tried to become one.

On paper at least, that former employee, Kenny Edwards, appeared qualified to be a dealer. According to court papers, Mr. Edwards had worked for the equipment maker for 30 years, becoming, before his retirement in 2001, sales director of its division that sells equipment for use on golf courses. An article in a trade magazine, Crittenden GolfInc, credited him with “leading” John Deere to a position of prominence in the golf industry once held by a rival, Toro.

But in his lawsuit, Mr. Edwards claimed that the company had blocked his efforts to buy two lucrative dealerships in Alabama from their owners by making excessive demands, such as requiring him to pledge additional property. Such demands, which Mr. Edwards contended the company did not seek from white dealers, prevented him “from realizing his dream of becoming the first African-American to own a Deere dealership,” his suit stated.

John Deere executives said that they had not discriminated against Mr. Edwards and had done nothing to block the deal. But whatever the case, some black leaders soon put pressure on the equipment maker. ...