Cinde Warmington, a number one Democratic contender for governor of New Hampshire and the one Democrat on the state’s Executive Council, served for years as a lawyer to a ache administration clinic community implicated within the Granite State’s opioid disaster.
As Warmington has made combating the state’s fentanyl crisis a central a part of her marketing campaign, the extent of her relationship with the agency now called PMC Medical Group, greatest recognized for its PainCare and Granite State Ache Associates amenities, is deeper than beforehand recognized. In truth, the clinics’ guardian firm and proprietor turned main contributors to her campaigns for New Hampshire Govt Council and governor.
In her two runs for Govt Council in 2020 and 2022, and in her present run for governor, Warmington acquired a mixed complete of $49,000 in marketing campaign contributions from Dr. Michael J. O’Connell, the proprietor of the ache clinic operation, and from the PMC Medical Group, the present identify for the guardian firm of O’Connell’s community of ache administration clinics.
O’Connell’s $10,000 donation to Warmington’s gubernatorial marketing campaign in April is the one contribution that both O’Connell, or the medical enterprise he based, have made to Warmington’s most up-to-date marketing campaign. (O’Connell, who died of lung most cancers earlier this month, made most of his contributions to Warmington’s campaigns, together with the newest one, by an entity known as the Michael J. O’Connell Revocable Family Trust.)
Now some Granite State Democrats concern that Warmington’s ties to an opioid supplier with a shady historical past will probably be a political legal responsibility within the race towards the Republican gubernatorial nominee within the 2024 common election. Former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte and former state Senate President Chuck Morse are the two candidates competing for the Republican nomination. The gubernatorial major is scheduled for Sept. 10 of subsequent yr.
“I like Cinde so much, however I’m satisfied will probably be a problem. Republicans will simply make an enormous concern of it, as a result of New Hampshire has had such an issue with respect to opioids,” stated Kathy Sullivan, a former chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Occasion backing Warmington’s major opponent, Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig. “It’s simply been an enormous drawback for years.”
A substance abuse restoration advocate dwelling in Somersworth, which is residence to one in every of O’Connell’s most controversial ache clinics, advised JS that they might by no means vote for Warmington due to her work for O’Connell and the clinic community as soon as often known as PainCare. The advocate, themself in restoration for methamphetamine habit, blames O’Connell and PainCare for getting their mom and aunt hooked on opioids by the frivolous prescription of OxyContin.
“It makes me really feel sick to my abdomen,” stated the advocate, who requested anonymity to guard their still-struggling mom. “Anyone that may stand and obtain blood cash … that’s an individual that speaks out of each side of their mouth.”
“The place is she going to align on all this, when push involves shove?” requested the advocate, a political impartial and swing voter who will not be supporting a specific candidate within the race.
Warmington has already confronted substantive criticism and political concern about her previous illustration of notorious OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma within the early 2000s, first reported in the New Hampshire Union Leader in June. Regardless of already emerging evidence that OxyContin abuse was resulting in habit and crime, Warmington deadpanned within the New Hampshire legislature in 2002 that whereas OxyContin was certainly topic to abuse by some customers, it was additionally being abused “within the press” with unduly detrimental protection.
Warmington’s marketing campaign famous that attorneys usually signify shoppers with whom they don’t agree, and argued that her file on the Govt Council speaks to her dedication to preventing opioid habit and bettering psychological well being care. For instance, Warmington voted to approve state funding in 2021 for extra youth psychiatric remedy beds at a facility in neighboring Vermont.
“Cinde spent over 20 years as a revered lawyer working for lots of of well being care shoppers together with hospitals, psychological well being facilities, abortion care suppliers, nurses, and medical doctors in all completely different specialties,” Philip Stein, Warmington’s marketing campaign supervisor, stated in an announcement. “On the Govt Council, Cinde has been the main advocate for increasing entry to substance abuse remedy and psychological well being companies and, in her private capability, she has served on a number of neighborhood psychological well being and substance use dysfunction remedy program boards.”
The marketing campaign additionally supplied an announcement from former New Hampshire Lawyer Common Joe Foster, who’s backing Warmington.
“I strongly consider that attorneys shouldn’t be attacked for the actions of their shoppers,” Foster stated. “Efforts to impugn the character and {qualifications} of a confirmed chief like Cinde primarily based on cherry-picked shoppers she’s represented exhibit a elementary misunderstanding of how our authorized system features.”
Warmington is listed as a registered agent for Pinewood Professionals LLC, one in every of a number of names of corporations that succeeded the defunct PainCare community, in its annual report in 2022. However the Warmington marketing campaign advised JS that she has not represented PMC Medical Group or any of its associates since taking workplace on the Govt Council in December 2020.
Warmington’s relationship with PMC Medical Group and PainCare, the primary ache clinic community owned by O’Connell in the course of the interval in query, dates to not less than 2011.
“I do see a sample as government councilor the place she has tended to train fiduciary accountability to the general public and never serving the trade.”
– Deborah “Arnie” Arnesen, progressive radio host
At the moment, O’Connell confronted complaints earlier than the New Hampshire Board of Drugs that he had engaged in romantic relationships with two girls he had beforehand handled, in violation of the board’s ethics guidelines. Warmington represented O’Connell in a 2011 settlement with the board, the place O’Connell would completely give up his medical license in return for the fees not being topic to formal adjudication.
In 2014, by which period there have been 12 PainCare clinics throughout the state, O’Connell was indicted by native prosecutors for allegedly tampering with one of many witnesses within the 2011 case earlier than the board, although he was apparently not convicted. His protection lawyer in that case was Invoice Christie, Warmington’s husband.
Later, in 2015, Warmington represented O’Connell when the well being committee within the state Home of Representatives was contemplating a invoice that will require physicians with revoked or suspended medical licenses to stop possession of a well being care facility or apply. Warmington argued that the invoice was being pushed by a jilted former colleague to punish O’Connell. The invoice was unanimously rejected.
Essentially the most controversial a part of PainCare’s historical past, nevertheless, entails a PainCare doctor assistant, Christopher Clough, who was convicted by the federal authorities of accepting unlawful kickbacks from fentanyl spray producer Insys that coincided with him massively overprescribing Subsys, the corporate’s fentanyl spray. Clough was sentenced to 4 years in federal jail in 2019.
Clough — and by extension, PainCare — performed a task in worsening the opioid disaster in New Hampshire within the mid-2010s. Clough’s actions and the clinic’s obvious negligence are nonetheless reverberating all through the state’s seacoast area specifically.
In 2013 and 2014, Clough issued 760 prescriptions for Subsys — about 84% of the prescriptions for the drug in New Hampshire, at a time when the state had the second-highest per capita charge of prescribing the drug. That interval coincided with an enormous uptick in opioid overdose loss of life charges in New Hampshire, which had the second-highest opioid overdose deaths per capita — after West Virginia — in 2014 and 2015. And Strafford County, residence to the primary PainCare clinic that employed Clough in Somersworth, remains one of many state’s overdose loss of life sizzling spots.
A few of Clough’s former patients sued Clough, PainCare and Insys, settling for undisclosed sums in 2017.
Warmington’s involvement in managing the fallout from Clough’s actions seems to have been restricted to representing Clough’s supervising doctor, Dr. John Schermerhorn. After a former worker of PainCare made a whistleblower grievance about Clough in 2013, the New Hampshire Board of Drugs’s investigation of the incident led it to search out that Schermerhorn failed to supply ample supervision of Clough. In a settlement that Warmington helped negotiate, the board reprimanded Schermerhorn.
O’Connell and the now PMC Medical Group, his community of ache administration clinics and habit restoration facilities, apparently paid it ahead to the agency’s lawyer when she first entered politics.
Over the course of her first run for Govt Council, within the 2020 election cycle, O’Connell and PMC Medical Group each contributed $7,000 to Warmington’s marketing campaign.
For her re-election bid within the 2022 cycle, PMC Medical Group contributed the utmost quantity of $15,000, and O’Connell gave $10,000, previous to the $10,000 he contributed towards Warmington’s gubernatorial marketing campaign earlier this yr.
The restoration advocate in Somersworth doesn’t belief anybody who labored for, or acquired cash from, O’Connell. Whereas Clough is the one ex-employee of O’Connell’s to be charged with and convicted of crimes associated to the opioid disaster, the restoration advocate maintains that O’Connell was operating a legalized capsule mill way back to the Nineties
The advocate was particularly offended to see O’Connell opening up a series of further amenities to treat opioid addictions that the advocate believes O’Connell’s personal ache administration clinics fueled.
“He was a predator and he used the inhabitants, a lower-income inhabitants, to his benefit,” the advocate stated. “This man has affected generations of individuals.”
JS spoke to progressive former state lawmaker and present-day radio host Deborah “Arnie” Arnesen, who was largely unbothered by Warmington’s work for PainCare and O’Connell, and the donations she subsequently acquired.
“I do see a sample as government councilor the place she has tended to train fiduciary accountability to the general public and never serving the trade,” stated Arnesen, who was the state’s first female gubernatorial nominee in 1992, and has not publicly endorsed anybody within the present race. “I can’t defend her, however I can’t finger her both, as a result of she’s acquired an attention-grabbing background.”
Arnesen did concede that the prospect of Republican assaults towards Warmington over her previous ties to makers and suppliers of opioids made her “bodily nauseous.”
Need assistance with substance use dysfunction or psychological well being points? Within the U.S., name 800-662-HELP (4357) for the SAMHSA National Helpline.
