Fred Thompson, Lobbyist, and his Ties to Philip Morris
Posted by Stephanie Taylor on June 26, 2007 at 09:30 AM
Fred Thompson, the Republican lobbyist now running for President, has deep ties to Philip Morris and the tobacco industry through his top advisors. From the Huffington Post:
Take Tom Collamore, who is expected to become Thompson's campaign manager. In 1992, Collamore went to work for Philip Morris and later became vice president of public affairs at Altria.
Howard Baker, who has been a top adviser to Thompson, represented Philip Morris as a lobbyist at Baker Donelson Bearman Berman Caldwell & Berkowitz in 1998 and 1999. Baker was paid $1.92 million for his work. In addition Baker represented four other tobacco companies during that period and received another $1.71 million from them.
In the 1990s, Philip Morris financed the creation of a pro-smoking citizens' group called the National Smokers Alliance to fight anti-tobacco initiatives. Much of the actual organization of the Smokers' Alliance was performed by a Washington public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller. One of the key players at Burson-Marsteller involved in the Smokers' Alliance was Ken Rietz, who recently retired as CEO.
Rietz is now coordinating much of the early media strategy for the Thompson campaign.
From 1994 to 2002, Philip Morris gave $9.5 million to Republican committees and $1.28 million to their Democratic counterparts. The year 2002 was the last year that corporations were permitted to make direct "soft money" contributions to the political parties--although the Supreme Court decision yesterday may overturn that law.
Comments (6) «
Karl Rove was a consultant for Philip Morris back in the "70's when he started financing Republicans to run for the state House and state Senate in Texas. He ultimately gained enough control to pass "tort reform" in Texas and get Bush elected governor. With the same back ground, we don't need a Karl Rove type character being elected president.
Great point. When you "follow the money," all the trails tend to intersect at some point in politics.
Ah, yes! Philip Morris, Altria, and don't forget Kraft (General Foods) Foods, my former employer. It's nice how after Philip Morris gobbled up a monopolized-size helping of the food industry, and after smokers health lawsuits began winning in the courts, that Altria was formed out of necessity to protect the resources of non-tobacco related industries of Philip Morris. That part made sense to me, simple legal protection for a conglomerate that was having legal difficulties in one sector of their business!
I did not realize the connection between Thompson, or Rove, with Altria, Morris, or Kraft, but can now better understand the business sense that I was working with at Kraft. I did not realize the direct link up of ideologies between the company and the policies of neoconservative practices.
It is now no wonder that the company would not work with me, as a single-parent, with my scheduling limitations. It's too bad because I still contend that Kraft Foods should consider their fortunes for having a product like Polly-O(R) Mozzarella and Ricotta Cheeses amongst their family of products. There is no other company that makes a cheese that is comparable to Polly-O(R) (Pollio)!!
Oh, goody goody. The Camel cigarette cartoon character is coming back to blow smoke in the face of voters for Fred Thompson.
Davidual, you should share that post on PartyBuilder, that's a compelling experience. Also wanted to share that Ari Berman wrote more about Thompson aide Ken Rietz on The Nation blog today here. And we've got more on Thompson on the blog--he tried to defend his life as a lobbyist today, and it wasn't pretty.
Freddy boy is a cheeseball second rate actor and a corporate bag man.
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