Watchdog Group Has Ties to Philip Morris

A self-styled campaign watchdog group, which recently released a study detailing millions of dollars of political contributions by trial lawyers, was created by a public relations firm hired by Philip Morris Cos. and secretly conducted the study for Philip Morris and other tobacco clients.

Documents provided to the Washington Post show how Contributions Watch, a supposedly independent and nonpartisan group that states its mission as improving campaign finance disclosure at the state level, was formed by a lobbying firm, State Affairs Co. That firm, in turn, worked with Philip Morris and Covington & Burling, a major Washington law firm that represents the tobacco industry, to orchestrate the release of the data collected by Contributions Watch. The study was issued by Contributions Watch.

The connections among Contributions Watch, State Affairs and the tobacco industry represent a new frontier in lobbying. It has become common for lobbying firms to create grass-roots citizen coalitions to buttress their causes. But the creation of a nonprofit watchdog group to generate media coverage helpful to the client’s cause represents a new twist.

“Of all the outrageous and unbelievable things that happen in Washington, this one takes the cake,” said Ellen Miller of the Center for Responsive Politics, which studies campaign contributions and fully discloses its own funding, which comes from foundations. “Posing as a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization to be unveiled as nothing but a special-interest tool is really the bottom line of gall.”

State Affairs, whose biggest client this year has been Philip Morris, specializes in state-level public relations and grass-roots lobbying work and, according to a promotional brochure, prides itself on its ability to “remain anonymous.”

State Affairs partners Charles Francis and John Davis confirmed in an interview last week that the Contributions Watch study was done for Philip Morris and other tobacco clients.

“The fact that the demon tobacco industry has dared count this money does not dispute or undermine the results,” Francis said. Contributions Watch reported that trial lawyers had contributed more than $100 million in state and federal races over the last seven years.

Trial lawyers and big businesses, such as the tobacco industry, are at war in many states over efforts by business interests to change state laws to help shield them from liability suits. A study of trial lawyers’ contributions could also show how trial lawyers have used political contributions to secure lucrative contingency fee retainers to represent states in their legal assault on tobacco companies.

Asked why Contributions Watch did not disclose its funding sources upfront, Davis said, “If we led a press release saying, ‘State Affairs Company, working with a number of corporate clients, has formed Contributions Watch,’ how do you think that would go?” He argued that Contributions Watch was no different from self-styled public interest groups on the other side of the debate over legal reform that take funding from interested parties and also do not disclose their sources of revenue.

Warren Miller, director of Contributions Watch and a former State Affairs employee, did not respond to several telephone messages seeking comment.

As a nonprofit, tax-exempt group, Contributions Watch is not legally required to disclose the source of its funding. “What’s wrong is that they are presenting themselves as something they are not, and they are not telling us what they are,” said University of Miami law professor Frances Hill, an expert on nonprofit groups.

For the tobacco industry, whose own large campaign contributions have been the subject of intense scrutiny, highlighting the political activities of its opponents made perfect sense.