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The New
York Times
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January 1, 2000, Saturday, Late Edition -
Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 22; Column 1; National
Desk
LENGTH: 1535 words
HEADLINE: Gore's Latest Attack on Bradley Tells Only
Part of Story
BYLINE: By JOHN M. BRODER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Dec. 31
BODY:
Vice President Gore has denounced former
Senator Bill Bradley for taking large amounts of campaign cash from
drug companies and, Mr. Gore says, doing their bidding during
his 18 years in the Senate.
In speeches, debates, advertisements and
campaign literature, the vice president has accused Mr. Bradley of repeatedly
siding with the pharmaceutical industry -- many of whose leading companies are
based in New Jersey, his home state -- while Mr. Gore portrays himself as the
consumer's advocate in Washington against predatory drug
manufacturers.
It is true that Mr. Bradley has championed some
legislation favored by the drug industry, but the Clinton-Gore
administration has also helped pharmaceutical companies on certain issues, and
the Clinton-Gore ticket has raked in plenty of their money, too.
During
the Bradley-Gore debate on the NBC program "Meet the Press" two weekends ago,
Mr. Gore, trying to paint Mr. Bradley as hypocritical on the issue of campaign
finance reform, noted that Mr. Bradley had received campaign contributions from
"all the C.E.O.'s of the major pharmaceutical companies."
Mr. Bradley
tried to respond, but the vice president abruptly cut him off to press his
attack.
In fact, eight chief executives of drug
companies -- including the heads of Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly
& Company, Johnson & Johnson and American Home Products -- have
contributed $1,000 each to Mr. Bradley's campaign, as have dozens of other
industry officials. Mr. Bradley's presidential campaign had received about
$65,000 from employees of drug concerns as of Nov. 1, according
to the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent watchdog group in
Washington.
But that is a small fraction of the $27 million the former
senator has raised this year for his presidential bid. The drug
industry does not rank among the top industry groups contributing to his
campaign (his top contributors include individuals tied to investment banks and
law firms). None of Mr. Bradley's 30 top fund-raisers is affiliated with a
drug company or a health care concern -- while several of Mr.
Gore's closest advisers are paid lobbyists for major drug
companies.
Still, Mr. Bradley was widely considered one of the
industry's most effective defenders in Congress. He supported an array of
measures backed by the drug industry, including bills that
would extend patent protection for popular
drugs and a large tax break for manufacturing pharmaceuticals
in Puerto Rico. He sponsored tariff reductions for raw materials needed in
drug manufacturing that would benefit home-state pharmaceutical
companies, and he voted to kill a 1992 amendment that would have imposed cost
controls on medicines.
Mr. Gore, in campaign literature, also notes that
Mr. Bradley received $96,160 from employees of major pharmaceutical companies in
his three campaigns for the Senate from 1978 to 1990. Again, that is a small
percentage of his overall Senate fund-raising total of more than $20 million.
Nonetheless, Mr. Gore has made Mr. Bradley's ties to the pharmaceutical
industry a central point of attack and a defining distinction between the two
Democrats.
"For voters looking for a clear difference between the two
candidates, they don't need to look any farther than the prescription
drug issue," said Chris Lehane, Mr. Gore's spokesman. "Al Gore
has devoted a good portion of his career to making prescription
drugs more accessible and more affordable while Senator Bradley
has taken a lot of money from the New Jersey pharmaceutical companies and
represented their interests."
It is true that Mr. Gore's stand on
prescription drugs has pitted him against the pharmaceutical
industry. But that did not stop the industry from showering money on the
Clinton-Gore campaigns in 1992 and 1996, as well as the Democratic Party. That
money, in fact, far eclipses the amounts that have gone to Mr. Bradley.
In the 1996 presidential election alone, drug company
employees donated $94,325 to the Clinton-Gore committee -- almost as much as Mr.
Gore says Mr. Bradley received in his three Senate campaigns. Pharmaceutical
employees donated $36,000 to the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign.
Mr. Gore
also accepted $50,200 in donations from the political action committees of major
pharmaceutical companies for his House and Senate races from 1983 to 1990 and
for his political action committee in 1998, according to a review of Federal
Election Commission reports by the Bradley campaign.
In addition,
election commission records show that pharmaceutical manufacturers gave the
Democratic Party $2.3 million in unrestricted soft money donations for the 1996
campaign and $829,000 for the 1992 campaign, some of which almost certainly
benefited the Clinton-Gore ticket by paying for political advertising, polling
and get-out-the-vote efforts. Mr. Gore's presidential campaign has received a
trickle of donations from individuals affiliated with drug
firms.
Mr. Lehane did not deny that Mr. Gore had received donations from
the drug industry over the years, but said that Mr. Gore had
consistently opposed their interests by supporting price controls on
prescription drugs.
On other issues, however, the
Clinton-Gore administration has been an industry ally. For example, the
administration supported dozens of patent extensions sought by
name-brand drug makers to protect their products from
competition from cheaper generic drugs.
In 1996, the
president signed into law a two-year extension of the patent on
Zantac, a popular ulcer medicine, that independent analysts said provided a $1
billion windfall for its manufacturer, Glaxo Wellcome Inc., which has
contributed more than $200,000 to the Democratic Party during the Clinton
administration.
Mr. Bradley voted against the Zantac patent
extension, arguing that generic substitutes for the medication would be
cheaper for consumers.
Officials in the pharmaceutical industry said Mr.
Bradley had been responsive to their concerns, but they dismissed Mr. Gore's
attacks as campaign posturing. They said that Mr. Bradley had not consulted them
before announcing his health care plan and expressed concern that it could lead
to price controls on prescription drugs -- a move they consider
the greatest threat government poses to their industry.
"There are very
serious issues at stake for the pharmaceutical industry" in this election, said
Alan F. Holmer, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of
America, the trade association for the big drug companies.
"Reducing these issues to politics doesn't help anyone, least of all patients
who are waiting for new cures and treatments."
Another top
drug industry official, John Doorley, director of corporate
communications at Merck & Company, said Mr. Bradley had listened to
drug makers' concerns -- and occasionally had supported their
positions in Congress.
Mr. Doorley added, however, that Mr. Bradley did
no more than would be expected of a senator whose state was home to several
large pharmaceutical companies. Merck, the world's largest drug
manufacturer, is based in Whitehouse Station, N.J., in the northwest part of the
state.
"He was one of our two senators, and therefore he was important
to us and us to him," Mr. Doorley said. "However, the pharmaceutical industry is
the largest manufacturing-based industry in the state and a very important
constituency to every member of the congressional delegation. So there would be
a relationship there, and that's all we would have to say."
In 1993, Mr.
Bradley introduced legislation that would have saved Merck $10 million in import
duties on three chemicals used in the manufacture of drugs. The
measure was one of a series of bills Mr. Bradley proposed that year to lift
tariffs on materials used by New Jersey companies, including one to benefit
Warner-Lambert, another big drug company with headquarters in
the state.
Executives from Merck and Warner-Lambert have contributed
about $25,000 to Mr. Bradley's campaigns for the senate and the presidency,
according to Federal Election Commission reports.
Eric Hauser, the chief
spokesman for Mr. Bradley, said the bills -- which never came up for a vote --
would have cost the Treasury a small amount in lost revenue while saving
consumers millions of dollars in lower prices on prescription
drugs.
But Mr. Hauser said the Clinton administration
had also taken pro-industry stands by extending patents on
dozens of brand-name drugs, costing consumers billions in
higher prices by stalling the introduction of cheaper generics.
Mr.
Lehane said the vice president had recently proposed changes in American
patent law that would speed introduction of generic medicines.
Mr. Hauser strongly denied that Mr. Bradley was, for financial or
geographical reasons, beholden to the drug industry.
"He was well known for his independence in the Senate and that
reputation came from his view that you decided things on the merits and that
influence from those with vested interests was never a determining factor for
him," Mr. Hauser said. "There is plenty of evidence to suggest that his record
was balanced between the right decisions for New Jersey and the right decisions
for consumers."
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