Ann O’Leary, a former chief of staff to California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), is representing the Walgreens pharmacy chain in its fight against the governor’s ban due to the company’s compliance with abortion laws.
Last week, Newsom angrily announced that the state would not renew contracts with Walgreens after the company said that it would comply with laws in 21 Republican-led states restricting drugs that cause abortion.
Newsom, who devoted himself to social issues while his state’s residents were trapped by blizzards, has sought to position himself as a Democratic Party leader in the nation’s “culture war.”
But Walgreens is pushing back, and Newsom was reportedly irritated to find that the company was being represented by his own former chief of staff — who has not formally registered as a lobbyist — on a conference call with the governor’s office.
Politico reported:
Some top advisers to the governor were alarmed to learn that O’Leary, a national authority on expanding abortion access, was trying to convince them to soften their approach on behalf of Walgreens, according to three people briefed on the exchanges.
POLITICO granted them anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter. One of the people said Newsom — who eventually spoke with Walgreens chief executive Rosalind Brewer — was disappointed not only in the pharmacy company’s vague response to his concerns but also the fact they came mostly from O’Leary.
There is a futher irony: Politico notes that O’Leary, a lawyer at Jenner & Block, had once pushed for tougher ethics rules that would limit the revolving-door effect between state officials and the lobbying world:
To some advisers and other people in Newsom’s immediate orbit, there was an unmistakable irony to O’Leary’s involvement. It was she, while serving as the governor’s chief of staff, who authored tough revolving-door and conflict-of-interest rules for Newsom’s advisers. The ethics rules came amid criticism of him for attending a powerful lobbyist friend’s birthday at the French Laundry.
The Los Angeles Times notes that Democrats in the state legislature have proposed 17 new bills to boost California’s status as a “sanctuary” for abortions. Newsom’s campaign paid for billboards in seven conservative states last year that urged people who want abortions to travel to California. Some quoted the New Testament.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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