Carpenter, M

M I KE CARPENTER is Director of Public Affairs for Philip Morris Management Corp. and is

responsible for overseeing all public affairs field activities in the United States. Mr. Carpenter

was appointed regional director, government affairs, for Philip Morris Management Corp. in

1997 where he was responsible for directing and coordinating the company’ s state and local

government affairs activities in Hawaii, California and five other western states.

He previously served as vice president of the Association for California Tort Reform in Sacramento, CA. Prior

to joining Philip Morris, he practiced law with the San Francisco law firm of Gordon & Rees.

Mr. Carpenter received a bachelor’ s degree in political science from the University of California

at Berkeley and a law degree from the University of San Francisco.
=<h2 class="title"><a href="http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/07/27/prop23-tobacco/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to 'Smelling A Chance To Burn Oil Money, Tobacco Lobbyists Orchestrate Effort To Repeal CA Clean Energy Law'">Smelling A Chance To Burn Oil Money, Tobacco Lobbyists Orchestrate Effort To Repeal CA Clean Energy Law</a></h2><a href="http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/07/27/prop23-tobacco/">http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/07/27/prop23-tobacco/</a>This post is part of a Progressive Media blogging series on the fossil fuel-funded Prop 23 effort to repeal California’s clean energy climate law. Read Rebecca Lefton’s posts on Prop 23′s <a href="http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/19/proposition-23-big-oil-economists-ab32/">economic</a> impact, national <a href="http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/16/california-proposition-23-clean-energy-climate-ab3/">repercussions</a>, and <a href="http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/16/california-proposition-23-clean-energy-climate-ab3/">funding</a> from Texas oil companies.<img src="/f16b03fa-173b-541a-b19c-9fd7f0f12df2.jpg"/>To manage their initiative to roll back California’s landmark climate change law, <a href="http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/16/california-proposition-23-clean-energy-climate-ab3/">AB 32</a>, big oil is turning to the same deceptive tobacco operatives who engineered Philip Morris’ fight against efforts to tax cigarettes and stop childhood as well as indoor smoking. According to veteran right-wing activist Ted Costa, former Philip Morris outside counsel Tom Hiltachk co-opted his AB 32 repeal initiative, known as Proposition 23 (“Prop 23″). Hiltachk’s name appears on <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ccrov/pdf/2010/february/10070km.pdf">both</a> <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/initiatives/pdfs/i902_initiative_09-0104.pdf">versions</a><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/initiatives/pdfs/i902_initiative_09-0104.pdf">https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/initiatives/pdfs/i902_initiative_09-0104.pdf</a>of Prop 23 filed with the California Attorney General, and his tactics and already ubiquitous in the campaign.Hiltachk, who is also serving as an attorney for Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, has made a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2007/08/06/070806taco_talk_hertzberg">career</a> writing misleading right-wing initiatives, then pitching the initiatives to corporations that may benefit from their passage. To fund Prop 23, he reached out to a friend from his days working for the tobacco industry, Mike Carpenter. Carpenter, the former top California <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.caepv.org/about/CorpConf/Presenter%2520Biographies%2520.doc">lobbyist</a> for Philip Morris, now lobbies for Valero, a Texan oil company with operations in California. To date, Valero has been the prime driver of the Prop 23, donating over <a href="http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/Detail.aspx?id=1323890&view=late1">$1 million</a> so far directly to the effort.The Prop 23 campaign seems to be <a href="http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/09/california-climate-law-proposition-23-ab32/#comment-284360">laundering</a> money and using front groups to promote their efforts. Indeed, one of the most visible groups supporting Prop 23, the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, which is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK2CkHujvfU">mobilizing</a> press events and “pro-business” organizing is <a href="http://www.camajorityreport.com/index.php?module=articles&func=display&ptid=9&aid=4202">funded by Valero</a>. Carpenter sits on the <a href="http://www.camajorityreport.com/index.php?module=articles&func=display&ptid=9&aid=4202">board</a> of the conservative think-tank, the Pacific Research Institute, producing bunk studies to bolster pro-Prop 23 claims. Other large donations to the pro-Prop 23 campaign are from front groups like the Missouri-based Adam Smith Foundation and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which both carefully conceal their funding.But these under-the-radar tactics of shifting money around and using phony groups are nothing new to Hiltachk and Carpenter:<blockquote>– During the eighties and nineties, Hiltachk and his law partners helped the tobacco industry, with funding from Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds, coordinate a variety of stealth front groups. While his law firm received over a million from tobacco interests, Hiltachk <a href="http://tobaccodocuments.org/nysa_ti_s2/TI14131741.html">helped organize</a> “Californians for Smokers’ Rights,” a supposedly “grassroots” group that relied on tobacco industry consumer lists to mobilize opposition to <a href="http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/tobacco/Pages/CTCPLegislativeMandateforTobaccoControl-Prop99.aspx">anti-smoking initiatives</a>. Working with “academic” fronts like the Claremont Institute (also <a href="http://tobaccodocuments.org/pm/2023668619-8626.html">funded</a> by tobacco), Hiltachk and his law partner Charles Bell mobilized business opposition through a front they helped <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bell,McAndrews%26_Hiltachk,LLP#Representing_Front_Groups">manage</a> called Californians for Fair Business Policy.– As the top California <a href="http://tobaccodocuments.org/nysa_ti_s2/TI31690777.html">lobbyist</a> for Philip Morris, Carpenter helped liaison to nonprofit groups to orchestrate efforts to fight back against anti-smoking laws. Working <a href="http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/hfz48d00/pdf">closely</a> with Hiltachk’s law firm at the time, Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller & Naylor, Carpenter distributed news clips, recommended tobacco donations to certain outside groups, and <a href="http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/mih82c00/pdf?search=%22mike%20carpenter%22">mobilized</a>messaging and polling operations against an <a href="http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition_10,%22First_5%22_Early_Childhood_Cigarette_Tax_%281998%29">initiative</a> to tax cigarettes to fund anti-childhood smoking programs, <a href="http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/action/search/advanced?p=1&sq[0].q=mike+carpenter&sq[0].f=er&sq[0].op=AND&sq[1].q=&sq[1].f=er&sq[1].op=AND&sq[2].q=&sq[2].f=er&sq[2].op=AND&sq[3].q=&sq[3].f=er&sq[3].op=AND&sq[4].q=&sq[4].f=er&sq[4].op=AND&sq[5].q=&sq[5].f=er&fd=1&asf=ddu&asd=&sd=&ed=&c=at&c=ba&c=bw&c=ca&c=ct&c=da&c=ll&c=lm&c=mg&c=mm&c=pm&c=py&c=re&c=rj&c=ti&c=ub&c=us">according</a> to files with the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library. One <a href="http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/vez48d00/pdf">document</a> shows Carpenter receiving a pro-tobacco screed from the Pacific Research Institute, faxed by a communications officer at Philip Morris. The Pacific Research Institute, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Pacific_Research_Institute">funded</a> by Valero and tobacco interests, is now helping to provide academic-sounding cachet to the pro-Prop 23 campaign.</blockquote>After millions of Californians needlessly suffered or died from smoking, the pair ultimately failed in their tobacco lobbying. California voters successfully passed several successive cigarette taxes and smoking bans.It appears Hiltachk and Carpenter are up to their old tricks. Carpenter is busy recruiting trade association support for the initiative, spending April <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.clfp.com/documents/nv/N%26V2010_Ed1_web.pdf">meeting</a> with groups like the California League of Food Processors. And for his part, Hiltachk has tapped firms he has <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1990-05-31/news/mn-919_1_gas-tax-increase">steered</a>contracts to for over twenty years, like Goddard Claussen West and Woodward & McDowell, to do the <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2010-07-09-the-climate-wars-western-front/">legwork</a> of signature gathering and ad making. According to Costa, the Prop 23 proponents boasted to him that they would raise $50 million for their campaign. Aside from the<a href="http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/19/proposition-23-big-oil-economists-ab32/">devastating</a> impact Prop 23 will have on California’s economy and the prospects for addressing climate change, at least former tobacco operatives like Hiltachk and Carpenter will be doing quite well.