We’ve already delved a bit into Herman Cain’s 1996-1999 stint as the head of the National Restaurant Assocation. Benjy Sarlin wrote about Cain’s lobbying against stricter drunk driving laws last week, for example.
Today, the New York Times has fleshed out Cain’s tenure at the NRA a bit further and found a tobacco industry who considered Cain a strong ally when he ran for president the first time.
Digging through some old tobacco industry documents from Cain’s time at the NRA — when he led the organization into lobbying partnerships with cigarette manufactures — the Times found this:
Rob Meyne, an official at the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which contributed handsomely to the restaurant group, wrote in a 1999 e-mail to his colleagues that Mr. Cain’s presidential plans were “not totally unexpected.” In the message, part of an online archive of tobacco industry documents, a wry and somewhat skeptical Mr. Meyne assessed Mr. Cain’s chances.
“Nice to have goals, huh?” Mr. Meyne wrote, speculating that perhaps Mr. Cain wanted to be vice president or had a cabinet post in mind. “In any event,” he went on, “Cain brings some positives. He is a genuine ‘antigovernment mandate’ conservative who happens to be an African-American. He is a wonderful speaker and would be an effective and charismatic candidate. He is also good on our issues.”
Being viewed by massive corporations as “good on our issues” is certainly much less of a liability in a GOP primary than it is in a Democratic one. But the email shows once again that Cain is really no outsider. He was a professional lobbyist for years, and his connections to the business world go much deeper — and are much more potentially politically dangerous — than just the more romantic tale of him turning around the failing Godfather’s Pizza.
Here’s what that sounds like, from the Times:
He allied himself closely with cigarette makers fighting restaurant smoking bans, spoke out against lowering blood-alcohol limits as a way to prevent drunken driving, fought an increase in the minimum wage and opposed a patients’ bill of rights — all in keeping with the interests of the industry he represented.
Read the whole story here.
