WASHINGTON
When Cerner executive Amanda Adkins launched her congressional campaign in September, her website featured a photograph of her standing next to the corporate logo on the company’s Kansas City, Kansas, campus.
The photo was cropped to remove the Cerner name shortly after the site went online. The change illustrates the ethical and optical challenges both the company and Adkins face as she seeks the Republican nomination to unseat Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids in Kansas’ 3rd congressional district, while continuing to work for the health care IT giant that holds billions of dollars in federal contracts.
Adkins is in a heated race for the GOP nomination with Sara Hart Weir, former president of the National Down Syndrome Society, and Adrienne Vallejo Foster, the former mayor of Roeland Park.
Candidates often take leaves of absence to pursue congressional runs, particularly if their employer has major business before the federal government. But Adkins, a former state GOP chair, has decided to stay on as a Cerner vice president during the campaign.
That poses risks for both Adkins and her company, according to campaign watchdog groups.
“The employer is going to have to be careful not to do anything that could be seen as subsidizing the campaign,” said Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center.
Federal law restricts government contractors from giving money to congressional candidates. Cerner will also have to protect against providing services to Adkins which could be seen as in-kind contributions under Federal Election Commission rules, Fischer said.
Adkins should also “be careful not to do anything to imply the company’s support for her campaign,” he added.
Cerner’s website currently lists five federal agencies as clients: The Federal Bureau of Prisons, Indian Health Services, the Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The VA contract, to create a new health records system, is worth $10 billion.
Adkins’ campaign declined to comment on its initial use of the logo, her former role as a lobbyist for Cerner or how the campaign would guard against conflicts of interest. It directed all questions to Cerner, which said in a statement that it has policies to ensure political activities of staff are lawful.
“We are comfortable with and, in fact, encourage Cerner associates to exercise their civic duties including running for political office. Cerner has policies governing political activities and we direct any associate participating in elections to do so on their own time,” said Mark Elkins, Cerner’s chief compliance officer, who has donated to Adkins’ campaign.
Cerner prohibits company money from being spent on federal campaigns, according to a copy of its policies shared with The Star.
The policies include a general restriction against using company facilities, resources or personnel for federal political activity. But it states that Cerner associates “may make occasional, isolated or incidental use of Cerner facilities and resources for individual volunteer activity in connection with a Federal election campaign.”
The policy also states that volunteer activity is limited to four hours per month and that any use of corporate resources, apart from incidental use of company phones and email, must be approved in advance.
“Associates engaged in volunteer political activity must also avoid the use of materials that could suggest a corporate endorsement, such as corporate stationary or corporate logos in connection with political activities,” the policy states. “On the other hand, more limited uses of corporate materials are acceptable, such as including a business card for identification purposes in the course of mailing a personal contribution.”
‘Walking right up to the line’
Asked about the initial use of Cerner’s logo on the campaign site, Misti Preston, a spokeswoman for the company, said in an email that when Adkins decided to run for office “the company’s policies were made clear to her: campaigning should be done on personal time and her personal campaign activities should be kept entirely separate and apart from her role at Cerner.”
But distinctions between company time and personal time are murky. Preston was unable to say how many hours Adkins works in a typical work week.
“I can’t comment specifically for Amanda as she doesn’t use a time clock. But, it’s safe to say that Cerner execs average far more than 40 hour workweeks,” she said.
Craig Holman, lobbyist for Public Citizen, a nonprofit watchdog group which champions stricter ethics rules for lawmakers, said Adkins situation with Cerner is “ not a common issue.”
“Almost always candidates realize there is a very significant conflict of interest,” he said. “She’s walking right up to the line here.”
However, Holman said in a follow-up email that if Cerner adheres to the letter of its policy guidelines then it should remain in compliance with federal law.
There is no requirement that candidates take a leave of absence when working for federal contractors, said Jordan Libowitz, spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
“For a lot of people, the appearance of a conflict of interest can be just as bad, which is why people who want to join government often take extra steps to avoid those appearances,” he said. “But there is not a legal requirement.”
Other private employers have been less accommodating than Cerner of political campaigns by employees. Marriott Vacations Worldwide fired an employee in 2014 over concerns that her campaign for a county commission seat in Florida exposed the company to conflicts of interest.
Meredith McGehee, the executive director of Issue One, a bipartisan group which advocates for ethics laws, said it’s unreasonable to expect candidates to quit their jobs when they run for Congress.
Instead, she said, the candidates and companies should be transparent about the safeguards they set up, the amount of hours being worked and what subjects related to the company the employee is not authorized to speak on during the run.
“I think it’s a much tougher question for the employer,” McGehee said. “If they are paying someone the same salary and they are not working, then they are making a contribution to the campaign.”
A decade of high-level roles
Cerner’s political activities have faced scrutiny before.
In 2004, four Cerner executives sent an email encouraging employees to support Jeanne Patterson, the wife of the company’s then-CEO Neal Patterson, in her unsuccessful bid to win a seat in Missouri’s 5th congressional district.
Patterson’s former campaign adviser, Jeff Roe, owns Axiom Strategies, a Kansas City-based consulting firm that has received more than $5,000 from Adkins’ campaign.
The company caused controversy in 2017 when it hired then-Kansas State Rep. Erin Davis as a lobbyist.
Davis maintained at the time there was no conflict of interest because Kansas wasn’t one of the states she was lobbying. But she was removed from her position on the Kansas House Appropriations Committee and saw her position at Cerner change after the uproar.
Adkins has worked for the company for more than a decade in a variety of high-level roles.
After managing Sam Brownback’s successful Senate re-election campaign in 2004, Adkins took a position as Cerner’s director of government affairs.
She recently slammed her GOP rival Sara Hart Weir’s career as a lobbyist, but records show that Adkins registered as a lobbyist with the Kansas Legislature in 2005 and with the U.S. House in 2006.
In 2008, Adkins was promoted to the company’s vice president and general manager of population health.
A story from Bloomberg on lobbying during the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver quotes Adkins about a VIP reception Cerner held for members of then-candidate Barack Obama’s staff, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats in anticipation of Obama’s push for health care reforms.
“The best leaders will listen and take counsel from experts in any given field, and our given field of expertise happens to be health care,” Adkins told Bloomberg. “We, among lots of different experts, have a role to play in the process.”
Adkins emailed The Star Sunday morning to say that she did not personally attend the convention or Cerner’s reception in Denver. However, she refused to answer any other questions about her time at Cerner, saying “per Cerner corporate policy any questions related to my work as a business leader there must be directed to the company.”
Adkins moved to a another job in July when she became vice president of strategic growth. The change occurred after she had already met with the National Republican Congressional Committee about the 3rd District race.
Adkins’ new role is to seek out new opportunities for growth beyond the hospital and health care areas that the company has traditionally focused on, according to a Cerner spokeswoman.
She touted the company during a Thursday appearance on KCMO Talk Radio in response to a question about growing the Kansas City region’s economy.
“There are a couple of areas where we need to focus on more. One is just what I would call innate or organic growth, meaning it’s not just that we’re seeking to move businesses here, but how are we growing more businesses here in the region that spring up. That’s Cerner by the way, that’s the company,” she told host Pete Mundo.
The company has drawn criticism for bringing little in the way of economic benefits to the neighborhood surrounding its $4.3 billion campus in south Kansas City. Cerner won a record $1.63 billion incentive package to redevelop the site of the old Bannister Mall.
Adkins’ campaign also comes at a time when Cerner is cutting jobs. Since September the company has announced two rounds of layoffs, which have affected more than 380 jobs. Cerner is the Kansas City area’s largest private employer with 14,000 employees in the region and a total of 30,000 worldwide.
Despite the prohibition on federal contractors giving directly to candidates, companies’ political action committees are free to contribute to campaigns. Individual employees are also free to give to Adkins’ campaign.
Excluding her personal contributions to the campaign, Adkins received $6,350 from Cerner employees during her first month in the race, including $2,800 from Donald Trigg, the company’s executive vice president, according to her October campaign finance filing.
The PAC hasn’t donated any money to Adkins’ campaign at this point, but Davids is the only House incumbent of either party from Kansas or Kansas City region not to receive a contribution from Cerner’s PAC this cycle.
Cerner’s corporate PAC spent $10,000 in support of Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder’s unsuccessful re-election bid last year. Yoder also received more money from Cerner employees than any other federal candidate in 2018 with $20,800 in individual donations, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Hana Callaghan, director of government ethics for the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, said Adkins will have to make it clear on the campaign trail that she’s not beholden to Cerner.
“You have to think about the optics, but that’s not really an ethical concern. It’s more a strategic concern. From an ethics standpoint, the most important thing is transparency,” Callaghan said.
This story has been updated to reflect emails from Adkins after publication regarding Cerner’s reception at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Adkins said she did not attend the reception.
Jason Hancock reported from Jefferson City.
This story was originally published November 17, 2019 5:00 AM.
Bryan Lowry
McClatchy DC
