SC company that used Trump tax cuts to give pay raises will host VP Mike Pence’s visit
A South Carolina company that touted benefiting from President Donald Trump’s tax cuts will host Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday for a Trump Victory campaign lunch before the country’s second-in-command speaks at The Citadel in Charleston.
Pence will join donors on Thursday at Nephron Pharmaceuticals, a privately-held respiratory drug manufacturing company owned by Lou Kennedy in West Columbia, according to sources with knowledge of the event.
After the 2018 midterms, Trump launched Trump Victory, a joint fundraising arm that is slated to significantly build up resources for Trump’s re-election and the Republican National Committee.
Thursday, Pence will attend the fundraiser for Trump’s re-election campaign, then head to The Citadel to give a speech at the Charleston military college’s Republican Society Patriot reception, where he’ll receive the Nathan Hale Patriot Award.
The relationship between Kennedy’s Nephron and the Trump administration is not new.
In late 2017, days after Trump signed tax cut legislation into law, Kennedy announced that Nephron would raise pay by 5% for employees who did not work on commission. The event was attended by a handful of Republican leaders including Gov. Henry McMaster and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham — both close allies of Trump.
When the tax cuts passed Congress, Kennedy said she and her husband, Nephron founder Bill Kennedy, were “cheering from the rooftops.”
“We thought, ‘How can we be a part of this?’ “ Lou Kennedy said at the time.
Reached Friday, she declined to comment on the vice president’s visit.
Last year, Kennedy, whose mother was a teacher, announced a new program for educators, offering part-time jobs to teachers to boost their income — part of a much broader debate as the General Assembly looks to raise teachers’ pay to the national average.
The program sparked a visit to Nephron from U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in July last year to celebrate after more than 250 companies had signed onto the White House’s “Pledge to America’s Workers.” Nephron was the first S.C. company to sign that pledge.
That same month, Kennedy and two Nephron employees met with Trump and senior adviser to the president Ivanka Trump, Trump’s daughter, to talk about Nephron’s commitment to Trump’s America’s Workers pledge.
And Kennedy also has been a big booster to Republican campaigns, spending thousands to help South Carolina’s incumbents run again and thousands more on GOP Super PACs and Republican parties in other states, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
This story was originally published February 7, 2020 at 5:07 PM.
