Warmington Tries To Turn The Page On Opioid Lobbying Issue. Will It Work?

By Michael Graham, NH Journal

After months of political pummeling over her work as an “opioid lobbyist,” Democratic candidate for governor Cinde Warmington has posted a video on social media designed to put the issue behind her and refocus the race on other topics.

However, Granite State political professionals say it is too little, too late.

The Ayotte campaign has kept up constant political fire over Warmington’s 2002 lobbying efforts on behalf of Purdue Pharma. During legislative hearings, she testified on behalf of the maker of OxyContin, describing the highly addictive painkiller as a “miracle drug” with few side effects.

“The resume that Opioid Lobbyist Warmington doesn’t want you to see includes highlighting her time being paid to lie on behalf of Purdue Pharma and representing a notorious pill mill,” said Ayotte campaign spokesman John Corbett. “Over the past two decades, Warmington repeatedly put her own self-interest ahead of New Hampshire, and we’ll continue to highlight her disqualifying record.”

Joyce Craig, who defeated Warmington in the 2024 Democratic gubernatorial primary, also used Warmington’s work as a painkiller lobbyist against her. It worked. Craig defeated Warmington by about six percentage points.

Now, after nearly four years of questions and campaign ads, Warmington has recorded a straight-to-camera statement giving her side of the story.

“So, by now, you have all seen the attacks, and I think it’s important that I set the record straight,” Warmington said before discussing her family’s struggles with addiction and how they affected her life.

“We did not escape the opioid crisis. I personally know the pain. I know the shame.”

She then explained that she was assigned the Purdue Pharma work by a partner at her law firm (Shaheen & Gordon, though she did not name the firm in the video). Warmington said she did not know about OxyContin’s dangers.

“What I did not know at the time was that Purdue Pharma was engaged in this massive criminal fraud, something that would be exposed only over years of litigation,” Warmington said.

“To be clear: if I had known in 2001 what we all later learned, I would never, ever have done this work. It is totally contrary to who I am as a person, to my childhood experiences, to the fact that many of the people that I love struggle with addiction.”

Warmington then repeated her attacks on Ayotte.

“Kelly Ayotte was the attorney general during the 2000s when other states were suing Purdue Pharma for the lies they told and the harm that they caused,” Warmington said.

“Kelly Ayotte did nothing to protect the people of the state, to sound the alarm. And then, as soon as she got out of office, she started collecting money from Big Pharma to the tune of over $400,000 from opioid manufacturers, and as late as 2016, she was taking money from the Sackler family while, at the same time, testifying on Capitol Hill about the ravages of the opioid crisis.”

Warmington concluded: “I think, in context, everyone can see the attacks on me are politics as usual.”

Will it be enough to end Ayotte’s opioid-lobbyist attacks? Probably not, campaign experts say.

“Ronald Reagan is credited with saying, ‘If you’re explaining, you are losing,’” said New England College President Wayne Lesperance, a political scientist and frequent commentator on New Hampshire politics.

“I can understand why Warmington’s campaign wants to try and set the record straight from their view. But the length and complexity of the explanation will not move the needle much, I suspect.”

Republican strategist Pat Griffin said that even if the explanation were simpler and more direct, the video would still have a problem: Cinde Warmington.

“Warmington to camera is not good. Some pols can pull it off, but not Cinde. She has no charisma,” Griffin said. “The message is awful, and she delivers it badly. And there are no production values. It looks like her driver shot it on his iPhone.”

There is another question: Who is going to see this statement?

It is not currently running as an ad. Most voters will never know it happened, even as Ayotte’s campaign continues pressing the pharmaceutical issue.

Several campaign professionals compared Warmington’s effort unfavorably with Ayotte’s strategy two years ago, when Democrats tried to make abortion the campaign’s top issue. Ayotte recorded her own straight-to-camera ad pledging not to increase abortion restrictions as governor. The ad ran heavily during the campaign, getting Ayotte’s side of the abortion issue before voters.

Will Warmington do the same?

And, Lesperance added, where is Warmington’s winning message?

“I suspect voters are not as interested in a 25-year-old news story as they are in what should be done now to address opioid addiction in our state. This video doesn’t offer insight into Ms. Warmington’s plans or her objections to Gov. Ayotte’s efforts.”

One more sign that Warmington did not put the opioid issue to rest with her video: After it was released, Team Ayotte placed a “Cinde Warmington, Opioid Lobbyist” banner ad across the top of the Union Leader’s front page.

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.