Lobbyist Paula Hawkins, Ex-Senator, Dies

According to the Center for Public Integrity, Hawkins was lobbying for Big Pharma against President Clinton's health care plan: Paula Hawkins, a consultant to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, who maintains the title "Senator" on her congressional lobbying report, despite being defeated in her
bid for a second term in 1987....
According to FEC records, the pharmaceutical industry has made $4,981,856 in PAC campaign contributions since 1991, and $1,484,026 in "soft" money to the political parties. The PRMA, with roughly 90 employees and a $32 million budget, embarked upon a $7 million ad campaign in late 1993.
They hired Robinson, Lake/Sawyer Miller, the merged public relations and advertising agency; Hugh Newton and Associates; and former Sen. Paula Hawkins, R-Fla.


http://www.publicintegrity.org/assets/pdf/WELL-HEALED.pdf

"Contrary to tradition, against the public morals, and hostile to good government, the lobby has reached such a position of power that it threatens government itself. Its size, its power, its capacity for evil, its greed, trickery, deception and fraud condemn it to the death it deserves."
- Hugo L. Black

"The consumer is the only [person] in our economy without a high-powered lobbyist in Washington."
- John F. Kennedy

December 5, 2009
Paula Hawkins, 82, Florida Ex-Senator, Dies
New York TImes
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON — Paula Hawkins, a tart-tongued conservative Republican who served a single term as a senator from Florida, fighting to protect children and blazing a trail for women while shunning the label of “feminist,” died Friday in Orlando, Fla. She was 82 and lived in Winter Park, Fla.

The cause was complications of a fall after several health problems, including a stroke, in recent years, her daughter Genean McKinnon said.

In her 1980 campaign, Mrs. Hawkins described herself as “feminine” as distinct from “feminist.” Her opposition to abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment made her anathema to the National Organization for Women, which picketed her appearances and accused her of embracing positions strictly in accordance with her Mormon faith.

Mrs. Hawkins was elected in the Reagan landslide, and despite the opposition of NOW, her victory scored some firsts for women. She was the first woman elected to a full Senate term without being preceded in politics by a husband or father. (Hazel Abel of Nebraska, who also had no political family ties, was elected to the Senate in 1954, but only to serve the final two months of the term of the incumbent, who had died in office.) She was also the first woman to be a senator from Florida.

At a news conference soon after her victory, a male television reporter condescendingly asked Mrs. Hawkins who would do the laundry now that she was going to be busy in the Senate.

“I don’t really think you need to worry about my laundry,” she replied, smiling with her lips but not with her eyes. “O.K.?”

Just before moving to Washington, she said she saw abortion as “tampering with human life.” Moreover, she said in an interview with The Washington Post: “The men have a lot to lose. I think it has emasculated the male, to say this is a women’s issue only.”

Mrs. Hawkins was the leading sponsor of the Missing Children’s Act of 1982, which requires the Federal Bureau of Investigation to enter descriptive information on missing children into a national computer database that can be used by law enforcement agencies across the country. (That year, she shocked her colleagues by disclosing in a Congressional hearing that she had been molested as a child by a neighbor.)

Mrs. Hawkins supported get-tough laws against drug traffickers. She also fought for legislation to help stay-at-home women enter the job market after being widowed or divorced and to take into account years spent at home raising children when calculating women’s pension benefits. In 1984, she was co-chairwoman of the platform committee at the Republican National Convention.

Paula Fickes was born in Salt Lake City and attended Utah State University. In 1955, Mrs. Hawkins, a former model, and her husband, Gene Hawkins, an electrical engineer and businessman, moved to Florida, where she was active in civic affairs before being elected to the State Public Service Commission in 1972. She became known as a consumer advocate and was re-elected to the commission in 1976.

She was seriously injured in 1982 when a television studio backdrop fell on her. Thereafter, she had chronic neck and back pain. She underwent surgery in 1986, when she was up for re-election. The time in the hospital and recuperating at home hampered her campaign, and she was defeated by Bob Graham, a Democrat, who was then governor.

Besides her daughter Genean and her husband, both of Winter Park, her survivors include another daughter, Kelly McCoy, also of Winter Park; a son, Kevin, of Denver; a sister, Carole Fickes of Sacramento; 11 grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.