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Non-Tech : Philip Morris - A Stock For Wealth Or Poverty (MO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rarebird who wrote (1863)	6/21/1998 12:53:00 PM
From: Xpiderman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6439

How the Tobacco War on Congress Was Won Big Tobacco pulled out all the stops to turn John McCain's juggernaut into a loser NO ONE GAVE Big Tobacco much of a chance on April 8 when it declared war on Congress. Least of all John McCain. The Arizona senator was the good guy, after all, a war-forged Republican rebel with an unsold conscience and an unassailable cause: saving America's children from the demon's weed for just $1.10 extra a pack. And for a while, most Republicans were too scared to argue. Big Tobacco's longtime allies in the Senate had stopped taking the tobacco lobby's calls as McCain's bill lurched its way toward the Senate floor ollecting tax hikes, constitutionally suspect advertising restrictions and political pork. Eager legislators waved off the compromises that the industry had previously extracted from the states and turned what was once a deal into a political pile-on. America was still cheering, and Big Tobacco could do nothing to stop it. But McCain, still smarting from his quixotic crusade for campaign finance reform, should have known there's more than one way to buy a pol. After dwelling blissfully in Beltway backrooms for years, the tobacco companies certainly knew. They marched straight for every politician's most vital supply line: the polls. They passed the lobbying checkbook over to BSMG Worldwide, a relatively little-known advertising house unstained by previous tobacco work, and quickly aimed a $40 million-plus campaign at the constituency Republicans would depend on most in November: the conservatives. "The focus of the campaign was brutal," says TIME Washington correspondent Bruce Van Voorst: "Don't mention health. Hit the High Taxes and Big Government angle." Millions of oversize dollar bills were printed up with McCain's picture in the middle and "It's Not About Kids, It's About Money" emblazoned on the front. BSMG also produced about 10 different TV spots, one of the most notorious of which was the "Washington's Gone Cuckoo Again" line with a cuckoo clock banging in the background. Ironically, when the cigarette companies went to tobacco towns to rally the farmers themselves against the McCain bill, they got a cool reception. "The industry had all but ignored them in last year's deal with the states, and the farmers remembered that," says Van Voorst. "They stood up and expressed their resentment at the growing tendency of tobacco production to shift overseas, and wondered aloud if they were just pawns in Big Tobacco's campaign." But for the united Big Five -- Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard and US Tobacco -- there was plenty of other outside help to be found. The Washington Legal Foundation, a conservative group that gets funding from RJR, took out full-page ads warning of "anti-smoking zealots." The Chamber of Commerce wrote to senators on June 5 that "although we support strong efforts to reduce underage smoking, this legislation reaches far beyond that goal. Our concern is based on the real threats that this legislation poses for many industries or businesses given its broad reach and expansive regulatory powers." Also swinging into action was the Washington-based based National Smokers Alliance, which receives funding from Philip Morris and Lorillard but claims that the alliance and its 3 million dues-paying members act on a separate-but-equal sort of agenda. "We do our own thing," the NSA's gravel-voiced senior vice president, Gary Auxier, told TIME Daily. What a thing it was. The NSA targeted "political hopefuls" by advertising against the bill in New Hampshire and Iowa, distributed millions of pre-addressed post cards to convenience stores and retail outlets, and ran its own print ads with a variation on the McCain dollar-bill theme. Its reason for an ongoing presence on the Hill in the wake of victory? "Eternal vigilance," says Auxier. When feisty RJR head Steven Goldstone led the Big Five's pullout in April, John McCain was defiant. "We cannot be either blackmailed or cajoled by the tobacco industry," he said. "We could never be placed in the position where the terms of this agreement were dictated to us by the tobacco companies." But eternal vigilance, coupled with a hefty advertising budget, can work like a charm for anybody -- even Big Tobacco, widely supposed to be too reviled by voters and too vulnerable in court to have any recourse but to return to the table. But too much politics spoiled the broth, and suddenly the GOP pollsters were reporting that the last Evil Empire had successfully morphed itself into some gritty Grand Fenwick. By last week, the Senate's Man of La Mancha was once again sounding the weary peals of defeat. "This campaign undoubtedly had an impact on the polls," McCain told TIME. "The big-taxes-and-government emphasis clearly made it possible for some senators to be comfortable in opposing the bill." On Monday, he was calling the industry's advertising barrage "a very wise investment." You suddenly got the feeling John McCain had seen this coming after all. Maybe there was nothing he could do. -- Check for TIME Magazine coverage of the death of the anti-tobacco legislation cgi.pathfinder.com@@AeJ5PwUAoNHkK9@E/time/daily/special/look/mccain/index.html