Behind that slo-mo smile?  Big Tobacco. 

Who would have guessed that even the stake to the heart of the tobacco industry would be at-risk of being removed in our rightward surge?  And yet, there he is:  Herman Cain, lackey to Big Tobacco, standing poised and ready to help out his old cronies, the people who made him, under the guise of removing excessive government regulation.

            An in-depth article in Sunday’s New York Times, “Cain, Now Running as a Political Insider, Went to Washington as a Lobbyist,”got the ball rolling, and thinkprogress.org has dug a little deeper, but neither do more than scratch the surface of the 156 references to Herman Cain contained in the University of California at San Francisco Legacy Tobacco Documents Library.

Cain’s tobacco era began when he took over as CEO and executive lobbyist for the National Restaurant Association (the other NRA).  Cain developed a money trail that culminated in contributions from R.J. Reynolds alone at a level of many hundreds of thousands of dollars in in-kind benefits to the NRA.  This was stated clearly by Rob Meyne, former senior director of public affairs for the tobacco company.  He wrote in a 1999 memo published by the Times that indicated R. J. Reynolds gave the National Restaurant Association “nearly $100,000 in cash and much more in in-kind support” on a more or less annual basis. One wonders what forms that in-kind support took, and how such support may have buoyed Mr. Cain’s premature foray into presidential politics in 2000.

            In return, Herman Cain became a junkyard dog for Big Tobacco.  According to Mr. Meyne in 1999 (from the Times article):

Bottom line:  Herman Cain is certain, in one form or another, to be a political factor for a number of years to come.  We have a good relationship with him, and that will certainly be to our benefit.

Mr. Meyne was certainly correct, if surprisingly so, on the first count.  He must have known first-hand of Mr. Cain’s nascent passion for politics.  And there is only one real way for the tobacco industry to have a good relationship with anybody, and that way is money.  Interesting, how he is “certain” about two aspects of Mr. Cain’s trajectory.

            Reviewing the record found in the tobacco archives, one thing is crystal clear:  Mr. Cain was passionate about restaurant-industry initiatives most closely aligned with the interests of the tobacco industry.  Cain put the restaurant industry on the map.  He did so with tobacco industry money.  He shilled for their interests above and beyond any logical, intrinsic interests of the restaurant industry.  According to the New York Times article:

Under Mr. Cain’s leadership, the restaurant association opposed higher taxes on cigarettes and the use of federal money to prosecute cigarette makers for fraud — positions that Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids said had little to do with the restaurant business.

And Mr. Cain argued vociferously that the decision about whether to go smoke-free was the province of individual restaurant owners, not the government. “The restaurant industry literally became the alter ego of the tobacco industry during that period of time,” Mr. Myers said in an interview.

            Now, the restaurant industry’s legislative interests around smoking were reprobate enough on their own in those days.  The industry was firmly fixated on the notion of maintaining each restaurant’s individual choice as to remain smoking or go smoke-free.  This was cast in an anti-government argument.  Cain himself was cast by Meyne as an “anti-government mandate” conservative.  Apparently, the prospective medical fates of those forced to work in smoke-filled environments never once occurred to Mr. Cain.

            His was a one-track mind, and he was a one-trick pony, authoring press release after release filled with the self-righteous rhetoric of the smoking industry.  It was never, never, about food for Herman.  Cain joined the board of Nabisco—in itself a weird appointment—not long before it merged with Reynolds.  Rob Meyne joined the board of the National Restaurant Association.  This was a marriage; a marriage of interests that formed—and forms—the potential to launch a candidate whose anti-regulation rhetoric is capable of upending a generation’s worth of anti-smoking efforts if her were to become president aligned with a Republican Congress.

            And why shouldn’t it?  Isn’t the right to smoke a perfect anti-gummint foil?  Doesn’t the pendulum always swing in both directions?  And who better to take it there than Herman Cain?  He’s all about, “Look over here; 9-9-9!”  Uh uh.  Follow the money.  And tail the guys that brung ya to the dance.  Meyne’s proprietary and slightly condescending attitude toward Cain bleeds through his assessment of Cain as a fledgling candidate in 1999, “Nice to have goals, huh?” he writes, continuing, “In any event, 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.”

            And Cain is duly appreciative of Mr. Meyne’s tobacco support, writing in a 1997 letter found in the tobacco archives, “Rob, as we head into a new millennium [sic], it will take courage and leadership from industry leaders like you if we are to Save American Free Enterprise.”  Save American Free Enterprise, or SAFE, was one of Mr. Cain’s own anti-regulation initiatives, one of his supposedly catchy one-liners, like 9-9-9.  But it was really Save American Tobacco.

            Many of us on the progressive side of the fence have asked of this Republican pack, “What regulations are they referring to?”  Obvious targets, like the EPA, go without saying.  But anti-tobacco regulations?  Who would have thought?  So, as of today anyway, meet Herman Cain, leader of the pack and stealth candidate for Big Tobacco.  His long-standing support for smoking rises to the level of a core belief and he should be hounded to address the subject.  And you wonder why Mr. Cain’s Chief of Staff, Mark Block, was smoking in that ad?  If you review Mr. Cain’s tenure as CEO and Lobbyist-in-Chief of the National Restaurant Association, you will realize that he never made an empty gesture.