Gubernatorial candidate Cinde Warmington’s legal career is getting a lot of attention these days. That’s in part because her main rival in the Democratic primary, former Manchester mayor Joyce Craig, is calling out Warmington for her work representing clients tied to the opioid crisis.
NHPR’s senior political reporter Josh Rogers spoke with Morning Edition host Rick Ganley about a negative campaign ad out this week.
Transcript
Okay Josh, it's now less than two weeks before the primary. It's a time when, you know, lines of political attack tend to get sharpened. What's at issue here?
Well, basically, the legal and lobbying work that Cinde Warmington has performed for entities tied to the opioid crisis here in New Hampshire. The lobbying was for Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. That lobbying took place in 2002. Warmington was hired to fight a requirement that patients try three other painkillers before their doctors could prescribe OxyContin. During a hearing back then, Warmington touted OxyContin as a "miracle drug with few side effects."
Warmington later worked also more extensively for a chain of pain clinics known as PainCare, which was a major prescriber of opioid painkillers across New Hampshire. The clinics were run and owned by a controversial figure in New Hampshire medical circles: Doctor Michael O'Connell. O'Connell ended up surrendering his medical license over engaging in allegedly improper sexual relationships with clients. Warmington actually helped O'Connell broker the resolution to that disciplinary proceeding. A PainCare physician assistant named Christopher Clough actually later ended up in prison for taking kickbacks in return for prescribing fentanyl. That criminal conduct took place in 2013 and 2014. That was when Cinde Warmington was the clinic's lawyer, and PainCare employees — Clough and others – were some of the most prolific prescribers of opioid painkillers to people in New Hampshire covered under the state's Medicaid program.
Many of PainCare's clients, it ought to be said, were people
suffering from real chronic pain and may have required high doses of painkillers. But for context, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of doses of opioids that were dispensed by this clinic.
All right, Josh, how does Warmington explain that chapter of her legal career?
Well, she held a press conference that was sort of triggered by the attack ad that Joyce Craig has on TV. And the main thing that Warmington was stressing was that her lobbying work for Purdue Pharma took place a long time ago, more than 20 years ago, before the true nature of OxyContin and Purdue Pharma's deceit in marketing was fully known. That was really her bottom line on that front. She says, you know, it would have gone differently had she known now what she knew then. And as far as PainCare goes, Warmington was really adamant that her work for the company was really limited to issues around the business end of it and regulatory matters — that her services in no way informed how PainCare actually practiced medicine. We can take a listen to some of what she said about her work for PainCare.
Warmington: “To cherry pick out a particular client and say that because I provided advice, for instance, like how to comply with HIPAA to a pain center is just a complete distortion.”
That's Warmington's explanation there. What do you make of it?
Well, I'm certainly not aware that Warmington ever had any involvement with how PainCare did practice medicine as far as clinical decision making and the like. But I can tell you that Warmington was quite vigilant about how PainCare was treated politically when she represented it, and about defending PainCare's image. She once sought a meeting with NHPR – this was back in 2015 – essentially to complain about a story that we ran that discussed PainCare and a piece of legislation that was targeting it. The bill, which was defeated, sought to bar doctors who've been stripped of their licenses from owning medical practices. I was part of the meeting that she wanted, and so was Warmington's husband, Bill Christie. He's also a lawyer at Shaheen and Gordon, where she worked, and he represented PainCare employees in court cases, including the physician assistant who ended up in prison. So there's some indication that Warmington's role for PainCare went simply beyond ensuring things like HIPAA compliance.
And it's also worth noting that PainCare's founder, Michael O'Connell, who died last year from cancer, was a major political donor and gave tens of thousands of dollars to her political campaigns, including the current one.
So, Josh, what's the upshot of this whole thing? You know, the Joyce Craig ad that's running, Warmington's efforts to rebut it – how does this affect the campaign going forward?
Well, that remains to be seen. This is a story that the Craig campaign has kind of wanted out there for some time, but I think the fight on this front does show how issues around the opioid crisis, which really is ongoing in New Hampshire, continues to strike political nerves for both leading Democrats in the primary. Warmington for sure, but also Craig, whose handling of opioids in Manchester came in for criticism yesterday from Warmington supporters who alleged that, as mayor, Craig was inhospitable to harm reduction efforts in the city. Permitting needle exchanges in parks was an example they gave.
I think all the fighting shows that these are issues the campaigns think can move voters. And I also think it's safe to expect that it's going to become a line of attack from Republicans during the general election, really, regardless of who is the Democratic nominee. Basically an argument that Manchester still has drug and crime problems if Craig is the nominee, and if Warmington wins, I think we can certainly expect Republicans to pile on when it comes to the Purdue Pharma lobbying and her representation of PainCare.
