The deputy chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa in June offered to connect Hanabusa’s advisers with an influential trade group for the drug industry that he claimed was committed to independent political spending in Hanabusa’s Democratic primary against U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz.
Christopher Raymond, Hanabusa’s deputy chief of staff in Washington, D.C., said in an email to Hanabusa’s advisers that the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, "has committed to pulling together an independent expenditure on CH’s behalf."
Under federal campaign-finance law, interest groups and political candidates are barred from coordinating independent political spending.
Raymond sent the email, which was first reported Saturday by the Washington Post, to Jennifer Sabas, a Hanabusa adviser and the former chief of staff to the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye; Rod Tanonaka, Hanabusa’s chief of staff; and Peter Boylan, a Hanabusa adviser and former deputy chief of staff to Inouye.
Raymond said he was going to give PhRMA executives the advisers’ email addresses and added that, if they were contacted by the PhRMA executives, "please know they are good Democrats."
Boylan, a Hanabusa campaign spokesman, described Raymond as a congressional staffer who was trying to inflate his influence and has no role in the Hanabusa campaign.
"This was an incident where a staffer inflated his influence and mischaracterized a group’s willingness to support," Boylan said. "There have been no discussions between the campaign, the official office, and PhRMA about independent expenditures."
A PhRMA spokesman told the Washington Post that the interest group did not offer to make an independent expenditure on Hanabusa’s behalf but did have discussions about a potential fundraiser for Hanabusa.
PhRMA represents the nation’s top drug and biotechnology companies. While the Hanabusa campaign could benefit from a fundraiser by the drug industry, a source close to her campaign said privately that independent political spending by PhRMA in Hawaii would likely be seen as a negative.
Progressives who support Schatz have criticized Hanabusa, a former labor attorney, as a corporate conservative because of her involvement in the centrist New Democrat Coalition, a perception that would likely increase if she were linked by campaign ads to prescription drug companies.
Clay Schroers, Schatz’s campaign manager, in a statement called the Hanabusa staffer’s email about PhRMA "a deeply troubling situation" and added that "Rep. Hanabusa clearly owes the people of Hawaii an explanation."
