O'Brien: The Moral Turpitude Of Being An Opioid Lobbyist

By Bill O'Brien, NH Journal

Cinde Warmington wants Granite Staters to believe her long record as an opioid lobbyist was routine “legal work.” That explanation isn’t just weak. It is amoral. And it is insulting because it invites voters to validate her world where elite status means your bad acts are not to be criticized, no matter the consequences.

New Hampshire families didn’t experience the opioid crisis in a world where the elite were blame-free or addictions and deaths are just abstract statistics. Instead, this crisis tore through families. It hollowed out communities. Opioids took the lives of thousands of vulnerable young people. And this crisis, enabled by industry-financed efforts by Cinde Warmington and others who brought it to us, left law enforcement, recovery workers, and medical professionals scrambling to address the damage. Thousands of victims and survivors paid the price.

For decades, Warmington was getting paid to represent the actors driving that crisis.

And now, when confronted with that record, she waves it away as if voters should simply accept her bad acts and move on.

This, despite the reality that she didn’t just quietly represent those interests either. She praised OxyContin as a “miracle drug” with “very few side effects.” When reporters began scrutinizing the opioid industry, she sought meetings to shut down negative coverage of her clients.

That isn’t harmless legal work. It didn’t reflect the time-honored tradition of lawyers representing unpopular clients charged in criminal court. It is inexcusable.

Warmington was the opioid industry’s Swiss Army knife – she was a lobbyist, an advocate, a champion, a lawyer, even moonlighting as their PR representative. She did it all for them and, no doubt, was paid handsomely and lives today in the luxury of those ill-gotten gains.

The truly galling part is what has happened since.

At any point, Warmington could have seen what we all knew and acknowledged that representing those interests was wrong. She could have apologized. She could have said that she regrets standing with companies that helped fuel a crisis that destroyed so many lives. Instead, she’s done the opposite.

She minimizes. She deflects. She gaslights voters into thinking the whole thing is being blown out of proportion. It’s hard to imagine a worse response. It is hardly possible for her to be more disrespectful to those young people who lost their lives and to their families left in sorrow.

Granite Staters remember what those years looked like. They remember the memorials. They remember the addiction crisis overwhelming their communities. They remember the endless work it took just to begin putting the pieces back together.

And they remember who was fighting to clean up the mess and who was causing the mess. They won’t forget those who were paid by the interests that helped create it. That history isn’t going away because lobbyist-turned-politician Cinde Warmington wishes it would.

What makes Warmington’s campaign especially offensive is the complete lack of humility. Not even the slightest acknowledgment that the work she chose to do may have contributed to something deeply harmful. Not even a simple apology to the families who lived through it.

Instead, she’s asking the people of New Hampshire to reward her with the highest elected office in the state.

Think about that for a moment. What kind of person looks at that record, refuses to take responsibility for it, and still believes they are entitled to lead the very state that suffered the consequences? What kind of politician assumes voters will simply forget the death of young people and the destruction of families?

I’ll tell you what kind of person does that: a self-absorbed, morally bankrupt special-interest shill who will do anything to climb the political ladder. The kind of lobbyist who sees tragedy as another opportunity for a paycheck. The kind of politician who takes money from the very interests poisoning our communities and then pretends none of it matters while the bodies pile up. The kind of political careerist who will sell out their own state to get ahead.

Running for governor is supposed to be about leadership. Leadership requires judgment. It requires knowing which side to be on when the stakes are high.

When the opioid industry needed a lobbyist, Cinde Warmington chose her side. She stood with Purdue Pharma and against New Hampshire families. She defended disgraced doctors. And then she bankrolled her campaigns with their money. Even now, with the full weight of the crisis understood, she refuses to own it.

That refusal tells voters everything they need to know.

Public service doesn’t demand perfection. But it does demand that you be a good person. And it also demands accountability. When someone’s power and wealth were built on the deaths of thousands, and she cannot even apologize for her role, she is neither a good person nor one who accepts accountability.

And that is Cinde Warmington. She’s offered only excuses and a demand that Granite Staters simply ignore her role in the opioid crisis.

They shouldn’t. Because when the opioid crisis was spreading, and the stakes were clear, Cinde Warmington stood with powerful special interests instead of the people of New Hampshire.

And that record of amoral behavior, greed for lobbyist fees, and lack of accountability disqualifies Cinde Warmington from ever being governor.

Former NH House Speaker Bill O’Brien is currently the RNC National Committeeman from New Hampshire and Chairman of the RNC Rules Committee. He wrote this for NHJournal.com.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.