A surprising point of contention during the Republican presidential debate last week was an executive order that Texas Governor Rick Perry passed in 2007 mandating that girls in the sixth grade in Texas receive an inoculation against human papillomavirus. After the signing of the executive order, which the Texas legislature later overturned, it came to light that Merck & Co., the manufacturer of the HPV vaccine, donated $5,000 to Perry’s 2006 gubernatorial re-election campaign.
Perry’s former chief of staff, Mike Toomey, was a lobbyist for Merck when the order was signed. Merck also donated to political action committees such as the Republican Governors Association, which, in turn, donated heavily to Perry’s campaigns in Texas. Overall, the Texas Tribune estimates that Perry has received roughly $30,000 from Merck in campaign funds over his 10 years as governor.
As the 2012 elections draw near, this episode demonstrates the extent to which politicians are clearly willing to sacrifice their most fundamental ideological positions for the sake of adding to their campaign war chests. Rick Perry frequently refers to his wish to make government involvement in citizens’ lives “inconsequential.” More damning, Perry told an Iowa crowd on August 16, “I don’t think the federal government has a role in … children’s education.” But Perry fought for the inoculation order to go through, even sacrificing political capital with social conservatives who contested it. A group of families even went so far as to sue in order to block the order, but Perry did not back down from the challenge.
Perry has since claimed he regrets the order. How is it that someone who defended the order by saying it made “good economic sense” regard the mandate as a “mistake” a mere four years later? The entire debacle highlights the influence that lobbyists—particularly lobbyists with large checks—have over politicians’ decisions.
The proportion of glib lines in speeches about the benefits of a certain proposal that was bought instead of thought is depressingly high. This controversy makes it clear that above all, politicians treasure not their constituents’ needs, or their party’s priorities, or even their own personal beliefs, but their own political survival. On an issue as serious as the health of young women, politicians like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann should set aside the blatant politicking. If they don’t, voters should hold them accountable for using children for their own political goals.
