Medical device security could figure into a bellwether Minessota congressional race this year. A report last week suggested thousands of lives could be at risk as pacemakers and defibrillators are vulnerable to hackers. That’s bad news for folks with heart problems and potentially disastrous news to the industry’s top candidate.
The claim was made by investment group Muddy Water Capital about devices manufactured by St. Jude Medical. It caused the company’s shares to drop from $85 to around $78 in days. Feds magnified concerns over the weekend when the Food and Drug Administration announced it was overseeing an investigation with the Department of Homeland Security.
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At the same time, former St. Jude executive Angie Craig, a Minnesota Democrat, is making her first bid for public office. Craig spent more than a decade running public relations and government lobbying efforts for the company. She had already juggled allegations that she helped the company evade responsibility for past wrongdoing.
The company’s settlement history includes nearly $20 million paid to the Department of Justice over claims of bad business practices. Those include $16 million paid in 2011 over a claim the company paid kickbacks to physicians to use its devices, and $3.65 million paid in 2012 over allegations that it had overcharged veterans.
National Republicans cited those misdeeds as a theme. “It is an astonishing display of hypocrisy for Angie Craig to run a campaign ad on her company’s record on veterans when that same company was forced to pay a multimillion dollar settlement for overcharging our nation’s veterans for medical devices,” a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee said in a Monday blog post.
Minnesota Republican Party Chairman Keith Downey went a step further in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “What’s odd is how any employee at a medical device company could support Obamacare like she does, and how any business person could back the devastating tax increases she supports … Now we find out that Craig may have known about the alleged vulnerabilities of hackable pacemakers and defibrillators, which would have directly placed people at risk,” Downey said. “She needs to come clean with what she knew about the alleged vulnerabilities and what she did in the situation.”
Craig did not return a request for comment. She has touted her experience as an executive for the company, arguing on her website that it could help her in DC and that she brought women into leadership roles during her tenure.
The district is highly competitive. Craig is running against conservative radio broadcaster Jason Lewis to replace retiring Republican Rep. John Kline, the powerful eight-term incumbent who spent the last five years chairing the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Kline has historically won reelection handily, with 56.1 percent of the vote to 38.9 percent for his opponent in the 2014 midterms.
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The district broadly speaking has a less partisan hue, with President Obama eking out a victory with 49.1 percent of the vote to 49.0 percent for Mitt Romney in 2012. Democrats have sought to promote Craig, who is gay and lives with a lesbian partner, placing her on this year’s list of “Red to Blue” races being targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and in early August sending Democratic House Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer to join her on a campaign tour.
Craig has also raked in a hefty sum in campaign contributions from her former industry, receiving $124,675 from St. Jude itself at the end of the last filing period and another $15,250 from medical device manufacturer Medtronic. The latter company inspired controversy of its own when in 2015 it moved its headquarters to Ireland to escape American corporate taxes.
Craig engaged in that same type of campaign spending on St. Jude’s behalf during her time at the company, serving as the head of its political action committee. Craig’s Republican opponent on Monday hoped to remind voters of that connection. “Voters deserve to know what really happened under executive Craig’s leadership,” said a statement put out by Jack Dwyer, a campaign manager for Lewis. “An apology to patients taxpayers, and veterans would be a first step in the right direction.”
