Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin, who has been slamming her opponent for taking donations from the pharma industry, raked in over $90,000 from candidate political action committees backed by drug and medical companies since last year.
Slotkin, a U.S. House member, received the donations from five leadership PACs that, in turn, took in $487,000 in funding from pharmaceutical and medical companies, according to campaign finance records.
The news comes as Slotkin and Democratic groups have ramped up attacks on former Rep. Mike Rogers, Slotkin’s Republican Senate opponent, over his donations from drug companies.
Since 2023, Slotkin has received $25,000 from the Blue Hen Federal PAC, which is the leadership PAC for Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.). The committee took in $106,000 from medical and pharma industry PACs during the same time period, including Amgen, AbbVie, and Eli Lilly.
She also received $10,000 from the All for Our Country Leadership PAC, linked to Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto (D., Nev.). The PAC took $139,000 from drug and medical sector groups, including Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Zeneca Inc., and CVS Health PAC.
Other drug and medical groups that helped fund leadership PACs supporting Slotkin, include Otsuka America Pharmaceutical PAC, Pfizer Inc PAC, and Bayer U.S. LLC Employee PAC.
Slotkin and Democratic groups have accused Rogers of taking donations from drug companies in exchange for political favors. In recent news articles and ads, they suggest that Rogers’s support for opioid access while in Congress was linked to campaign contributions from the pharma industry.
"If you give Mike Rogers a million bucks, he’ll vote to ban Medicare from negotiating cheaper drug prices," said an ad released by Slotkin last week. "Don’t take my word for it, just ask the drug companies."
Republicans hit back at Slotkin, saying that her decision to rent a home from a pharma lobbyist who was also a campaign donor was a sign of her own relationships with the drug industry. In 2022, Slotkin switched congressional districts and rented a condo owned by Jerry Hollister, the government affairs director at the pharmaceutical company Niowave Inc., who has donated around $1,800 to Slotkin, according to MLive.
"Elissa Slotkin lied about living in a lobbyist’s home, being a small business owner, and owning a farm," said NRSC spokeswoman Maggie Abboud. "Michigan voters can’t trust Slotkin to tell them the truth."
The rental arrangement triggered an FEC complaint and investigation, which found no evidence of wrongdoing by Slotkin or Hollister.
Rogers’s campaign declined to comment. Slotkin’s campaign declined to comment on the donations. Slotkin spokesman Austin Cook said Rogers "called himself the 'champion' of the opioid industry and did their bidding in Congress. He took hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from the same companies that are paying billions in legal settlements for their role in causing the opioid epidemic."