Republicans may hope to use a moderate façade in prime time during the party’s national convention next month, but behind the scenes, the GOP has left one powerful special interest in charge: Big Tobacco.
My friend Andrew, who knows more than a little about this issue, noticed a Newday report yesterday that emphasized security concerns at the RNC, but included an interesting point.
For Bill Harris, the chief executive of the Republican National Convention, today’s takeover of Madison Square Garden was supposed to be a cheerful milestone, a day when worries gave way to the reassuring sound of workers hammering nails.
Instead, the Alabama-bred Washington insider has been forced to deal with growing uneasiness about security in the wake of the Bush administration’s recent warning that terrorist chatter indicates they might target the convention.
And this has created some New York-style aggravation for Harris, a low key former tobacco industry lobbyist whose play-nice-with-Democrats credo makes him a sort of anti-Dick Cheney.
Wait, the chief executive of the Republican convention was a tobacco lobbyist? The GOP has done an impressive job keeping this little tidbit of news quiet.
Harris, who has a cordial relationship with anti-smoking crusader Mike Bloomberg, also earned $100,000 from Phillip Morris, which hired his company to lobby on the national tobacco settlement in 1998 and 1999. Harris’s top deputy, chief operating officer Hector Irastorza Jr., who will oversee the transformation of the Garden over the next six weeks, served as a Phillip Morris vice president for much of the 1990s.
So not only is the CEO of the Republican convention a former tobacco lobbyist, but the man principally responsible for making Madison Square Garden ready for the event was a top executive for Phillip Morris.
Usually Republicans at least pretend to maintain a healthy distance between their party and the embarrassing special interest groups that keep their coffers full. At least in this instance, the GOP isn’t even trying to blur the line; it’s just handing over the convention to Big Tabacco.
Some Republican officials have at least noticed the problem.
“Bill was a kind of an odd pick,” said one convention planner, speaking on condition of anonymity. “He’s supposed to be the public face of the convention, but he’s really an insider, a lobbyist, a Washington guy.”
Not just any ol’ lobbyist, mind you, but a tobacco lobbyist. If the GOP thinks trial lawyers are unpopular, let’s test to see what voters think of these guys.
For now, the CEO of the convention seems to be enjoying his relative anonymity.
“The good news and the bad news about being Bill Harris is that nobody knows who Bill Harris is,” Harris said.
Well, let’s see if we can change that, shall we?