Biopharma may yet get an alum in Congress

Last year, when former Celgene CEO Bob Hugin ran for Senate, we wondered whether anyone from the drug industry had ever won a seat in Congress. The answer, so far as we could tell from federal archives, was no. (To be fair, Herman Metz, elected in 1912, was a “manufacturer and importer of dyestuffs, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals”).

That brings us to Arati Kreibich, who is running for a House seat in Hugin’s native New Jersey. She’s a neuroscientist who previously worked at Teva and EMD Serono.

But that’s where the Hugin similarities end. Kreibich is a Democrat running to unseat a member of her own party, the centrist Rep. Josh Gottheimer, who beat a seven-term Republican incumbent in 2016. Kreibich is in favor of “Medicare for All,” a proposal that would allow the government to negotiate directly with drug makers over the price of medicine, something the industry is resolutely against.

Her odds of joining Metz in the pantheon of ex-pharma lawmakers look a little long. Kreibich’s district, New Jersey’s fifth, went to President Trump in 2016, and Gottheimer, who opposes Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, claimed a narrow victory after a bruising campaign.