{"id":4476,"date":"2009-04-17T17:39:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-17T23:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/04\/king-refutes-newspapers-pay-to-sue-allegations\/"},"modified":"2009-04-17T17:39:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-17T23:39:00","slug":"king-refutes-newspapers-pay-to-sue-allegations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/04\/king-refutes-newspapers-pay-to-sue-allegations\/","title":{"rendered":"King refutes newspaper’s ‘pay-to-sue’ allegations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Attorney General Gary King<\/a> says any implication made by the Wall Street Journal<\/a> of pay to play by him or his administration is false.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat there was a contract that was given for a contribution is totally false,\u201d King said. \u201cThat implication is really what concerned me more than anything. \u2026 There\u2019s no quid pro quo there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The newspaper at least implied pay to play on Thursday in an editorial I\u2019ve already written about<\/a> that accused King, other state\u2019s attorneys general and a Houston law firm of being involved in a national \u201cpay-to-sue\u201d scheme. The newspaper alleges that Houston lawyer F. Kenneth Bailey has taken a \u201cpre-packaged lawsuit\u201d against a pharmaceutical company to a number of states and convinced their AGs to get involved by giving them big campaign contributions.<\/p>\n

Bailey and his firm gave $50,000 to King, the editorial states.<\/p>\n

King said New Mexico is represented by Bailey\u2019s law firm in a multi-state lawsuit against Janssen Pharmaceuticals<\/a>. The law firm was hired in 2006 following a competitive bidding process. King pointed out that he wasn\u2019t the AG at the time. He took office at the start of 2007.<\/p>\n

King did, on a no-bid contract, extend the agreement with the law firm last year, but he said that\u2019s because it wouldn\u2019t make sense to change attorneys in the middle of a lawsuit. The contract can be extended each year until the lawsuit is complete.<\/p>\n

The newspaper alleged that \u201cpay-to-sue\u201d lawsuits can sometimes be baseless, but King said this lawsuit is strong. The company, New Mexico alleges, marketed to the state\u2019s Medicaid program a drug it said would lower anxiety in people in nursing homes. But the company didn\u2019t tell the state all it needed to know about the drug\u2019s side effects. And the state was overcharged because it was falsely told that the drug was better for treating anxiety than other, cheaper alternatives, King said.<\/p>\n

As for the campaign contributions, King, a Democrat, said his campaign treasurer hasn\u2019t been available, so he\u2019s still trying to determine if he took any money from Bailey or his law firm. He said any contributions would have been given in accordance with the law.<\/p>\n

New Mexico had no campaign contribution limits when King last ran for office in 2006. The state recently approved a contribution-limit bill King pushed that will take effect after the 2010 election.<\/p>\n

Editorial \u2018didn\u2019t contain all of the facts\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

King\u2019s defense wasn\u2019t included in the Wall Street Journal\u2019s editorial, the AG said, because the newspaper never called him for comment.for office <\/p>\n

Why? The business-friendly newspaper, King said, is being used as the latest assault by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and drug companies who are trying to stop \u201cactivist attorneys general\u201d from taking on big business. In 2006, King said, the groups funneled $650,000 to his opponent through the Republican Leadership Council<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy initial thought was that the article didn\u2019t contain all of the facts,\u201d King said about the newspaper editorial. \u201cThey tried to insinuate that something was wrong\u2026 and to me it just appears to be part of the ongoing battle where there are organizations trying to prevent attorneys general from pursuing consumer cases.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Attorney General Gary King says any implication made by the Wall Street Journal of pay to play by him or his administration is false. \u201cThat there was a contract that was given for a contribution is totally false,\u201d King said. \u201cThat implication is really what concerned me more than anything. \u2026 There\u2019s no quid pro […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}