Ellington

The two personalities on the Republican primary ballot of the gubernatorial race couldn't seem any more different. Tyner, with his innocent gee-whiz demeanor and Boy Scout-ish philosophies, stepped quietly into the political boxing ring like a million-to-one-long-shot prize fighter with a toast-rack chest, diminutive little legs and oversized boxing gloves.

Like an incensed terrier, Tyner tore into Barbour. Barbour has a political history. Tyner does not. (Although many believe he has a history in the making, possibly propped up by state Democrats to do their political detective work on Barbour.) According to recent Secretary of State campaign-finance reports, Barbour has about $1 million in campaign donations from wealthy backers such as the Republican Governors Association pulling him through the race. Tyner has a second mortgage on his house.

But what Tyner says probably irritates Barbour in some very fundamental ways. Tyner is making a point to portray Barbour as a waddling, obscenely rich checklist on how to mix your priorities in state government.

"I have major issues with the clients [Barbour] represented in Washington, and it seems to me that his 22-year history in Washington is inconsistent with the best interests of Mississippi," said Tyner, a trial lawyer who owns Tyner Law Firm in Jackson. "It was very consistent with interests in his back pocket."

With a lawyer's innate ability to sniff out ugly, Tyner has attempted to pull so many skeletons out of Barbour's closet that they seem to dance along behind him when he walks through a crowd. Just look through Barbour's history on the Internet, Tyner says, adding that plenty of negative information will come up. Tyner also bangs the book "Pigs at the Trough," written by conservative-turned-progressive pundit Arianna Huffington, which speaks to financial corruption in government and names Barbour within its pages.

Declaring the Internet as his guide, the 40-year-old Tyner talks openly about Barbour's 1997 attempt to grab a $50 billion tax credit for tobacco companies, as well as allegedly illegal campaign donations orchestrated through a Hong Kong businessman in 1994. Tyner also discusses Barbour's history with the casino industry, saying Barbour's lobbying firm, Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, has netted $540,000 since 2001 for the attempted expansion of the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians' proposed casino in Tishomingo County.

"I am not for the expansion of the casino industry. I think it's something that destroys lives, and it is wrong for our government to become dependent on the income from the gambling industry," Tyner said.

In a recent interview, Barbour, 55, took the defensive, denying many of Tyner's criticisms.

Tyner's characterization is simply inaccurate, said Barbour, first addressing Tyner's assertion of the $50 billion tax cut. "It was not a federal tax credit. We were hired to try to get Congress to enact into law the settlement agreement that the tobacco companies reached with Mike Moore and the other state [attorneys general]. The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 was passed, and it included a 15 cent-a-pack, $5-billion-a-year increase in the tax on cigarettes."

Barbour explained that 1997 Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was concerned that congressmen from tobacco states like Kentucky might vote against the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 because of the cigarette tax. The bill was already under fire from Democrats and Republicans from the House and Senate, as well as then-President Bill Clinton. The bill also came down the pike immediately following a slew of successful class-action suits against tobacco companies.

"The intention we had was that the states would get all the money. It was intended that this settlement amount would count against the total settlement amount (owed by tobacco companies to states to the tune of billions of dollars) if that settlement was enacted into law, so the tobacco companies got no tax benefit out of it," Barbour said. He didn't mention, though, that money credited to states through the tax would, of course, mean money no longer owed to the states by Phillip Morris and other tobacco companies. According to CNN, despite Barbour's argument, Congress caught the insertion and overwhelmingly repealed it by a 95-3 vote in the Senate and killed it with a unanimous vote in the House.

Addressing Tyner's assertion of 1994 illegal campaign funding, Barbour described the scenario as an overblown diversion tactic orchestrated by the Clinton administration.

"This was a loan made by a Florida corporation. It turned out that they had been loaned the money by their Hong Kong parent company, which is perfectly legal. We didn't know it at the time. We were told that it was the Florida company's money. When the Clintons got in trouble for their campaign wrongdoing, their first defense was 'everybody does it,' and 'see here, the Republicans did something wrong,' so the Republican Party and I were investigated by the Senate," Barbour said.

The DNC at the time, indeed, had its own problems. A 1996 final report from the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs declared that in the fall of 1996, John Huang had been a key player in numerous questionable DNC fund-raising ventures. They included the infamous Hsi Lai Temple fund raiser and the Yogesh Gandhi mess in which Huang had solicited approximately $1.6 million and violated the Hatch Act in that certain solicitations were undertaken during his tenure at the Commerce Department.

Investigations into both DNC and GOP fund-raising tactics had raised much hullabaloo, but efforts to actually curtail soft money were squashed by both sides.

Barbour added that even after a lengthy investigation from both the Senate and the Justice Department, the GOP was cleared of wrongdoing. Barbour's think tank, The National Policy Forum, which had taken the money, defaulted on the loan anyhow.

Barbour also disputed Tyner's charge of casino cultivation in Mississippi, saying that his company had never attempted to push for a casino in Mississippi.

"We never represented [the Jena Band of Choctaws] on anything [in Mississippi]. We represented them in Louisiana because Louisiana wanted it," Barbour said. "My partner told them then that they weren't going to have a casino in Tishomingo County. Then when they started having trouble they came back and said, 'would y'all help us,' and we said no."

Tyner and Barbour also butt heads on issues relating to Medicaid, particularly that aspect of it concerning the high price of medication. By calling up Barbour's history as a pharmaceutical lobbyist, Tyner hopes to present Barbour as one more factor aggravating the high cost of Medicaid in Mississippi.

"Patients have been trying to obtain more affordable drugs and the industry has figured out that if they can expand their patent rights on popular drugs every six months, it's worth literally billions of dollars," Tyner said. "They have loopholes where they can extend their patent rights for years to come, and Barbour helped push them through Congress."

Tyner explained that the federal government is the biggest buyer of pharmaceuticals and alleges that the drug industry went from a $25 billion to a $38 billion profit by extending these patent rights.

Barbour does not deny the accusation, but said his motivation was just and that he considers himself a defender of intellectual property laws, adding that Medicare can work its way through expensive medication without stealing any intellectual property rights, and naming a Mississippi program as an example.

"Mississippi already has, to its credit, adopted a Medicaid program that first requires you to try a generic drug to see if it works. The first option is, of course, for non-prescription drugs, then generic; then you should only go to the more expensive prescription drug if the generic doesn't work. I think that's a very healthy program, but that's not the same as taking away from someone's patent," Barbour said. "If you can't make money off your invention, why would you bother inventing it?"

He did not explain how emerging generics could reach the market and better serve the Mississippi Medicaid program if patents continued to be extended, but said he saw no conflict between his work with drug companies and Medicaid.

Follow Tyner's Internet trail to discredit Barbour at WashingtonFatCat.com, posted by "friends of Mitch Tyner."
You can also post comments on both candidates' JFP politics blog pages

Previous Comments

ID

77151

Comment

The above story understates the amount of money Haley Barbour has raised to date. Reed Branson reports in the Commercial Appeal that he has raised about $3.8 million, of which he has spent over $2 million, as of July 25: http://www.gomemphis.com/mca/desoto/article/0,1426,MCA_451_2134611,00.html

Author

ladd

Date

2003-08-01T11:24:46-06:00

ID

77152

Comment

The JFP might want to do a little more fact checking. As of July 29th Barbour had received $4,903,884.42 in contributions and had $1,959,024.67 in cash on hand.

Author

Reader

Date

2003-08-01T16:14:41-06:00