Among House Democrats supporting Fast Track, 24 of 28 received money from drug and medical device PACS

I spent a bit of time to look at the contributions from selected drug and medical device Political Action Committees (PACs) to the 28 House Democrats who voted for fast track on June 18, 2015. I looked at PACs from 7 US companies (Pfizer, Amgen, Merck, Lilly, J&J and BMS), 7 foreign companies (AstraZeneca, Sanofi, GSK, Novo Nordisk, Novartis, Genetech/Roche and Bayer), 3 medical device companies (Boston Scientific, Medtronic and Becton Dickson), and three trade associations (PhRMA, BIO and AdvaMed), using the 2014 cycle data, as reported on OpenSecrets.Org. The data are here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Czg5YWLEOU9hSwxhc4cUfXicfE_A7rTnmD8UOBWvpBY/pubhtml

Of the 28 Fast Track democrats in the House, 24 received money from these 20 PACs. Leading the way were Ron Kind (D-WI-03), who received contributions from 20 of the 20 PACs, Scott Peters (D-CA-52), who received money from 17 of the 19 PACs, and Kurt Schrader (D-OR-05), who received money from 15 of the 20 PACS.

Among the four Democrats supporting Fast Track that received nothing from the 20 drug and medical device PACs were Jim Costa (D-CA-16), Brad Ashford (D-NE-02), Jim Cooper (D-TN-05) and Beto O’Rourke (D-TX-16).

The amount of money reported by the PACs turns out to be only a fraction of the money a candidate receives from the drug companies, as much of the money is actually donated through lobbyists and by bundling contributions, but it does provide a useful data point that is highly correlated to the overall industry support.


As an aside, note that 6 of the 28 Fast Track Democrats were among those who also signed a July 27, 2011 letter supporting a 12 year monopoly on biologic drug test data, one of the more controversial issues in the TPP negotiations. A copy of that letter is here. Note the first signature on the letter is from Ron Kind, the member who received money from 20 of the 20 PACs.

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