Buddy Carter’s decade-long ethics and conflict-of-interest questions are resurfacing as he enters a competitive U.S. Senate primary in Georgia, focusing scrutiny on his ties to the pharmacy industry and past legislative moves that critics say blurred public duty and private interest.
Georgia Congressman Buddy Carter has jumped into the Senate primary against Rep. Mike Collins and former coach Derek Dooley, and the race is already drawing attention to a history of ethics complaints. Polling shows Collins ahead, leaving Carter to answer for controversies that stretch back to his time as a state senator and his career as a pharmacist.
Many of the concerns trace to Carter’s unique position as the only licensed pharmacist in Congress and to legislation he pushed that watchdogs say could have favored his business interests. That background has made opponents and good-government groups question whether he used public office in ways that advantaged private pharmacies.
In 2014 Carter introduced Senate Bill 408 while in the state Senate, legislation industry experts said would have directly benefited the three pharmacies he owned at the time. Critics argued the bill added rules for pharmacy benefit managers that would alter how drug prices were negotiated, potentially shifting money toward retail pharmacies.
Mark Merritt, then president of a pharmacy benefits manager trade group, warned about the bill’s impact. “We see it as something that helps the drug stores increase profit margins, but hurts everybody else,” he said. “The bottom line is, that money is coming out of the pocket of the consumer,” he added.
“The only winner out of this is drug stores and those who own drug stores,” Merritt said, language that still echoes in criticism of Carter’s legislative priorities. Carter pushed back at the time, saying, “I don’t think it would be fair to say it would benefit us,” and framing the proposal as creating a “level playing field for us in pharmacy.”
Carter later conceded someone other than a pharmacist probably should have carried the bill, saying, “Ideally, we would have liked someone else to carry it … but because of the rush of this session and because it was getting close … to the deadline, I decided to drop it.” Still, the episode prompted watchdogs to flag a possible conflict.
State rules were cited by critics, with one passage noting “Senators and Senate staff shal refrain from using government positions to attain personal financial gain.” Observers like Ryan Splitlog of Common Cause described the measure as the sort of move that “raises the public’s eyebrows.”
Legislative records show Senate Bill 408 died in committee, and Carter transferred ownership of his pharmacies to his wife before taking his House seat. But questions followed: in 2016 reporters noted Carter sponsored bills that independent pharmacy owners said would help their bottom line, including measures to secure Medicare payments for pharmacist vaccinations.
Carter, who transferred his pharmacies to his wife, was the only pharmacist in Congress before November’s election and a vocal advocate of the pharmacy lobby’s top issues.
Advocates for stronger ethics enforcement continued to voice concern. Brinkley Serkedekis of Common Cause described the legislation as making it “a clear violation” of House Ethics rules, while Carter’s team later asserted the House Ethics Committee cleared his actions without producing public documentation.
Carter also pushed to land a spot on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a powerful panel that oversees pharmaceuticals. That effort rekindled conflict-of-interest alarms because the committee has broad jurisdiction over drug pricing, user fees and regulatory matters that directly affect the industry.
The placement is a highly prized one. The committee is one of the last remaining legislative powerhouses on Capitol Hill, with a wide jurisdiction over health care, energy, manufacturing and telecommunications. Big donors tend to come with it.
And as Carter, R-Pooler, notes in his pitch to colleagues, Energy and Commerce oversees prescription drug price increases and the user fees aimed at expediting the review of pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
That fact has raised questions among good government advocates about whether conflicts of interest would arise should Carter, a pharmacist before he was elected to Congress, be appointed to the panel.
William Perry of Georgia Ethics Watchdogs put the concern bluntly: “There’s certainly what is defined as conflict of interest by law, and there’s conflict of interest by common sense, and what Buddy Carter’s doing violates most people’s common sense understanding of conflict of interest and ethics.”
Beyond pharmacy bills, Carter faced an ethics complaint in 2017 over alleged campaign account transfers intended to “evade bans on transferring money between state and federal campaign accounts.” The complaint detailed donations routed through state accounts and then appearing to benefit his federal committee.
It contends that he shifted thousands of dollars from that state account to Georgia state lawmakers, or to a campaign consultant, who made contributions — several times in the same amount — to Carter’s federal campaign committee.
The two-term Republican from Pooler dismissed the complaint in a statement.
“This appears to be a partisan political stunt from a local Democratic activist,” Carter said. “Look no further than the media receiving this before the ink even dried on the signature.”
State lawmakers who were named in the filings denied any wrongdoing, with one saying there was “zero connection” between the transfers and the allegations. As the primary race unfolds, those disputes and earlier red flags will likely remain part of the argument over Carter’s fitness for higher office.
