$700,000 will back Measure 50 to raise cigarette tax

STEVE LAW
Statesman Journal

Get ready for a multimillion-dollar rumble between health care advocates and big tobacco.

Backers of a proposed 84-cent-per-pack cigarette tax increase to expand health care coverage have launched their campaign with $700,000 in cash and pledges, mostly from hospitals, health insurers and the lung, heart and cancer associations.

The proposal, known as Measure 50, is on the Nov. 6 ballot.

Support from the health care industry could enable backers to stay reasonably competitive with tobacco companies, which spent an eye-popping $70 million to defeat a 2006 cigarette tax increase in California.

Cigarette companies and their allies are doing polling on Measure 50 and are expected to decide soon whether to enter the fight.

“It’s going to be a matter of just a few days,” said Salem lobbyist Mark Nelson, who would manage the tobacco industry-funded opposition campaign. “I believe they will proceed.”

He expects his coalition to include multiple tobacco companies, convenience stores that sell tobacco and chambers of commerce.

Measure 50 would provide universal health care for children and youths under age 19, expand health coverage for low-income adults and bolster tobacco-use prevention.

State lawmakers placed Measure 50 before voters after failing to muster enough votes to pass it outright.

A coalition of health industry companies, health care associations and labor groups recently hired Carol Butler to manage the yes on Measure 50 campaign. She led a successful 2006 campaign to defeat Measure 43 in Oregon, which would have required parental notification before minors could have abortions.

Butler is hiring additional campaign staff.

Labor groups were among the most vocal supporters of the so-called Healthy Kids Plan during the 2007 legislative session, but health care groups are leading the charge financially.

The newly formed political action committee, Yes on the Healthy Kids Plan, has garnered contributions or pledges of $50,000 or more from six health care groups, including Kaiser Permanente and Regence BlueCross.

The American Cancer Society pledged $100,000 and the lung and heart associations each pledged $50,000, according to reports filed with the Oregon Elections Division.

SEIU Local 503 pledged $50,000, the largest labor donation so far.

Initial polling shows strong voter support for Measure 50, Butler said. And voters don’t seem overly concerned that the measure is a constitutional amendment, despite earlier fears among supporters, she said.

So far, all the money to support the measure has come from Oregon-based interests, Butler said. But if tobacco companies enter the fray, supporters will turn to national sources for financial assistance, she said.

Four tobacco tax increases were placed on state ballots through the initiative process in 2006, according to the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California.

Posted on August 16, 2007 | Return to the NEWS Archive