Politics & Money: Pharma Still Bets On Obama
7 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // September 23rd, 2008 // 2:53 pm
The fact that pharma is giving more money to Barack Obama is no longer big news. But Politico tries to get a little more mileage out of the trend with a piece concluding the current election cycle is “the first in which the drug companies are publicly showing their hand through their political giving.”
We’re not so sure that’s true. But we do agree that, as Politico writes, the donations don’t amount to “a full sprint to the left. Rather, it’s almost as though the industry has planted itself on a neutral base - still in the game but on neither side.” That’s despite John McCain’s boasts about taking on the drug industry and his calls for cheap imports.
“The rift with the industry’s Republican allies is being driven by more than just a feud with McCain, and it extends further down the ballot,” Politico writes, “where cash-starved House and Senate Republicans are being denied the lion’s share of the industry’s donations for the first time in six election cycles. The driving force behind the shift is market forces. The previous free-market business model under which drug costs were covered by commercial insurance or cash payments is dead.”
The accompanying chart, courtesy of the Center for Responsive Politics, captures data through July 28, which is admittedly a bit outdated at this point. Still, it presents some insight into recent giving. We will update you when new figures become available.
Dan A.
My opinion as a non-political person, but it’s safe to say that those corporations with thier high affinity for the green stuff clearly lean to the right, and thier gifting in the legislature has historically indicated this premise.
Money to Obama by such entities may be to assure and aggressively form reciprocal, mutualistic relationships with Obama’s advisors to prevent another Hiliary objective that caused a bit of tachycardia with pharma back in the early 1990s.
Justice in MI
Essentially, this represents a return to the pattern pre-Gingrich “revolution,” when pharma pretty much went with whoever they thought had the best chance of winning. The changed for ten years until the Dems took the House in 2006.
Jack2
It also looks like some of these contributions come from individuals. There are people who work for pharma (like me) who not only don’t rank pharma as their number one political issue - they don’t even rate healthcare as their number one issue.
Pharma Whore
For years Pharma has rammed the Republican platform down our throats, it is about time that they side with “Change” and not fear of Hilary coming to get them!!!
It’s about time.
Justice in MI
Jack 2 makes a key point. The reality is that, as a group, people who work in pharma are a more likely Democratic demographic than otherwise - advanced degrees, income, white-collar professionals, etc.. This is not to trade in sterotypes; just to echo what most polls suggest.
It was the “soft money” that made up much of the Republican leaning until 2006, not the contributions of individuals who work in the industry.
Just A Thought
I think it’s about this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB-cvcCeAqs
Justice in MI
That was then. Those big bad companies wined and dined both parties up the kazoo at their conventions. And neither major candidate has so much as whispered anything that would give the industry a twitch.
Has anyone heard otherwise?