Georgia Republican Congressman Buddy Carter has thrown his hat into the state's Senate race, entering a primary against Rep. Mike Collins and former college football coach Derek Dooley.
Collins is leading the primary field in polling, well ahead of Carter, and now Carter is facing serious questions about a decade-long history of ethics investigations and conflict-of-interest complaints. Carter is the only licensed pharmacist in Congress, and many of the concerns stem from that career.
In 2014, while a state senator, Carter faced questions about Senate Bill 408, a bill he introduced. Industry experts said the legislation would directly benefit Carter and the three pharmacies he owned at the time.
According to that Fox5 I-Team investigation, the bill was "complicated with language about pharmacy benefit managers and maximum allowable costs."
The investigation said pharmacy benefit managers who administer prescription plans for insurance companies often negotiate the price consumers paid for drugs. This bill, Fox5 said, would have put restrictions on those benefit managers must do before they set that price.
"We see it as something that helps the drug stores increase profit margins, but hurts everybody else," said Mark Merritt, who was then the President of the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, a pharmacy benefits manager trade association. "The bottom line is, that money is coming out of the pocket of the consumer," he added.
"The only winner out of this is drug stores and those who own drug stores," Merritt said.
Carter was asked if his bill would benefit pharmacists like himself.
"I don't think it would be fair to say it would benefit us," Carter said at the time. "I think it would be fair to say that it would be more of a level playing field for us in pharmacy."
Carter did admit someone other than a pharmacist should have authored the bill. "Ideally, we would have liked someone else to carry it ... but because of the rush of this session and because it was getting close ... to the deadline, I decided to drop it," he said.
Fox5 pointed out that Georgia Senate Rules said "Senators and Senate staff shal refrain from using government positions to attain personal financial gain."
Ryan Splitlog of Common Cause, a government watchdog group, reviewed the bill and said, "I think it raises the public's eyebrows."
According to Legiscan, Senate Bill 408 died in committee, and Carter was elected to Congress later that year. Prior to taking office, he transferred ownership of his three pharmacies to his wife.
The ethics concerns and conflict of interest questions followed Carter to Congress, however. In 2016, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that Carter sponsored two bills that could benefit independent pharmacy owners financially, including one that would provide Medicare payments to pharmacists who provided vaccinations.
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Carter, who transferred his pharmacies to his wife, was the only pharmacist in Congress before November's election and a vocal advocate of the pharmacy lobby's top issues.
Brinkley Serkedekis of Common Cause said the legislation would benefit Carter financially, making it "a clear violation" of House Ethics rules. Carter's team later claimed the House Ethics Committee cleared his actions, but there was no proof provided.
Carter also fought to get on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees the nation's pharmaceutical industry. This once again raised questions of ethics and conflict of interest.
Atlanta Journal Constitution reported:
The placement is a highly prized one. The committee is one of the last remaining legislative powerhouses on Capitol Hill, with a wide jurisdiction over health care, energy, manufacturing and telecommunications. Big donors tend to come with it.
And as Carter, R-Pooler, notes in his pitch to colleagues, Energy and Commerce oversees prescription drug price increases and the user fees aimed at expediting the review of pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
That fact has raised questions among good government advocates about whether conflicts of interest would arise should Carter, a pharmacist before he was elected to Congress, be appointed to the panel.
William Perry, head of Georgia Ethics Watchdogs, said "There's certainly what is defined as conflict of interest by law, and there's conflict of interest by common sense, and what Buddy Carter's doing violates most people's common sense understanding of conflict of interest and ethics."
In 2017, Carter was one of several Republican state legislators targeted by an ethics complaint that said he wrongly accepted contributions to "evade bans on transferring money between state and federal campaign accounts." According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the complaint focused on a state Senate campaign account that Carter kept active even after announcing his plan to run for the U.S. House seat.
It contends that he shifted thousands of dollars from that state account to Georgia state lawmakers, or to a campaign consultant, who made contributions — several times in the same amount — to Carter’s federal campaign committee.
The two-term Republican from Pooler dismissed the complaint in a statement.
“This appears to be a partisan political stunt from a local Democratic activist,” Carter said. “Look no further than the media receiving this before the ink even dried on the signature.”
The complaint, filed by local resident Lisa Ring, documents several donations from state lawmakers. Among them were contributions from state Sen. Jeff Mullis, U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk and state Rep. Ron Stephens.
State Rep. Ron Stephens said there was "zero connection" between the transfers. "I gave him a contribution because I supported him ... and he wrote me a check because he supported me. There was no wrongdoing," Stephens said.
As the race continues to unfold, Buddy Carter’s long history of ethics questions and conflict-of-interest concerns could prove to be a liability in a competitive primary, particularly as Republican voters look for a candidate who can win and hold the seat.