A House panel is expected to approve today sweeping tobacco regulation that would put the bill on pace for House passage far earlier in the congressional session than in the last Congress.The House Energy and Commerce Committee vote, expected this afternoon or evening, would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to police the tobacco industry.

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (H.R. 1256) is nearly identical to a bill the House passed by a wide margin last summer. The Senate did not take action last year.

Health advocates — comfortable their bill will pass the House again this Congress — are already looking to the Senate where they ran out of time last year.

Some Republican House members grumbled that the committee, which has nine new members, was rushing to action without holding hearings on the health issue.

Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., a physician, argued today that FDA should focus on securing the nation’s food supply first. He said people understand the dangers of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, which are blamed for taking the lives of 442,000 people each year.

“What they don’t understand is why a child should die from eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” Gingrey said.

The arguments were similar to last year’s House committee debate.

“There’s nothing new before us today,” said former committee chairman John Dingell, D-Mich. “But then as now, the Senate is the obstacle to getting this legislation passed into law.”

The measure has split the tobacco industry, with industry giants Altria, Inc., parent company of Philip Morris USA, and United Smokeless Tobacco favoring the bill.

Reynolds American and Lorrilard Tobacco have argued the bill’s marketing restrictions and expansion of health warning labels would freeze the competitive market, favoring arch rival Philip Morris.

Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., is planning to introduce a Republican alternative bill to create a new tobacco harm reduction center within the Department of Health and Human Services. The center would combine smoking cessation programs with industry strategies to reduce the harm from tobacco products, Republicans said.

Aides to Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C. said he may introduce a similar bill in the Senate.

With Democrats winning expanded majorities in the House and Senate last fall, neither bill is expected to receive much support.

Democrats contend FDA is the right agency to police tobacco. They would pay for the regulation through a tax on cigarettes that would start at about a penny per cigarette pack this year and rise to at least 5 cents per pack within a decade, generating between $85 million and $712 million per year, according to committee staff.

Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., who represents the largest tobacco-producing district in the country and serves on the commerce committee, praised the proposal for protecting tobacco farmers. The bill will allow farmers to “continue to earn a living … so they can support their families and their communities,” he said.

The N&O is reporting that Christina Reynolds, who worked on communications for John Edwards’ 2008 presidential campaign, will now work as director of media affairs for President Obama.

Two Triad attorneys are fighting for a seat on the state’s highest court.

Suzanne Reynolds, a law professor at Wake Forest University and an expert in family law, is challenging Robert H. “Bob” Edmunds Jr., a former federal prosecutor from Greensboro who was elected to the state Supreme Court in 2000.

The court’s seven justices hear cases from three sources: They are required to hear all death-penalty appeals and split decisions from the Court of Appeals. They also can choose from appealed cases to review.
Edmunds, an associate justice, makes $133,576. The term is for eight years.

In campaign appearances and in a recent interview with the Winston-Salem Journal, Edmunds said the experience that he has – and that Reynolds lacks – sets him apart.

He has worked as an appeals-court judge, the top federal prosecutor for the district covering Greensboro and Winston-Salem, and a criminal-defense attorney.

He also has a favorite line on the campaign trail: “It’s not an entry-level job.”

Reynolds says that it’s inaccurate and insulting to refer to her 27 years of experience teaching the law and leading legal seminars across the state as “entry-level.” She said that it ignores fine judges who have jumped from analyzing legal cases as professors to analyzing cases as judges.

“The court would benefit from someone bringing a scholarly, analytical approach to the work,” Reynolds said. “I am exactly the candidate they need.”

Reynolds co-founded a domestic-violence advocacy center, wrote a three-volume treatise on family law, and has helped write new state laws on alimony and adoption.

One reason that she is running, she said, is that the court has steadily been choosing fewer cases to review in recent years and writing fewer full opinions – from more than 100 opinions a year in the mid-1990s to 32 during the past fiscal year.

The court also is writing too many of what are called per curiam opinions, in which justices look at a split decision from the appeals court.

A per curiam opinion is typically short, and says that one side of the appeals court had it right. It often doesn’t do enough to clear up the original disagreement, Reynolds said.

“It leaves the law unclear,” she said.

Edmunds says that the court has to be careful in making law.

“On the Supreme Court, if you make a mistake, it stays made,” he said.

When the court issues per curiam opinions, he said, it does so because all the justices agree that the issue does not require a full opinion.

And he defends taking fewer cases, saying that when the court was writing more opinions, it was working through a large backlog caused by taking on too many cases.

“This is a hard-working court,” Edmunds said.

Both candidates tout various endorsements – Edmunds is endorsed by more former Supreme Court chief justices, while Reynolds has support from two of the three state attorney groups that make endorsements.

Edmunds has received most of the endorsements from the state’s largest newspapers.

Both Edmunds and Reynolds are using the state’s public campaign financing.

The state Democratic party has spent money on ads for Reynolds and other judges that are Democrats in newspapers that serve black communities. That has triggered more state money for Edmunds’ campaign to respond.

He drew some criticism when he told a gathering of Republicans that he could be the last person standing between them and one-party government, referring to Democratic majorities in the state legislature and on the Supreme Court, if Reynolds wins.

The current Supreme Court has four Republicans and three Democrats.

Edmunds said he regrets the comment. Both candidates have otherwise downplayed the importance of their political views, saying that they rule according to the law.

Though judges spend most of their most of their working hours applying the law, there are some times when they are making law, and their ideologies may matter to voters, said Gregory Wallace, a law professor at Campbell University.

“They make law when they interpret vague or broad terms in constitutions or statutes,” he said. “Voters have a legitimate right to know what kind of law they might make.”

The two campaigns have disagreed over an ad run by the Edmunds campaign. In the ad, Sheriff Brad Riley of Cabarrus County points to men in a line-up of suspects and says that they don’t want voters to re-elect Edmunds.

Reynolds’ campaign says that the ad implies Edmunds will rule a certain way – against the criminal element – in cases, which violates the spirit of a pledge that both candidates made to keep politics out of the race, including any implication that they will prejudge cases.

Edmunds said that criminal defendants always get a fair hearing from him, and the ad highlights his support from 89 of the state’s sheriffs and his experience as a prosecutor. “I don’t think you can go any further than that,” he said.

N.C. Supreme Court
Robert “Bob” Edmunds Jr.
• Age: 59.
• Lives in: Greensboro.
• Job: Supreme Court justice since 2000.
• Experience: 30 years as an attorney; former U.S. attorney for the Middle District. J.D. from UNC Chapel Hill, 1975.
• Top priority if elected: “Because criminal cases constitute the largest percentage of the Court’s caseload, if re-elected, I will continue to provide the expertise I have gained both as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney.”
• Web site: www.reelectjusticeedmunds.com.

Suzanne Reynolds
• Age: 59.
• Lives in: Winston-Salem.
• Job: Law professor at Wake Forest University since 1981.
• Experience: Professor for 27 years, in civil practice from 1977-1981. J.D. from Wake Forest, 1977.
• Top priority if elected: “To address the legal issues before the NC Supreme Court with my experience in analyzing, teaching, and writing about the law and with my commitment to fair and impartial justice.”
• Web site: www.suzannereynolds.or.