Brown & William CEO Tommy Sandefur the Tobacco Hardliner
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Brown & William CEO Tommy Sandefur the tobacco hardliner among ‘Carcinogenic 7.” Former employee: "I have never seen the man exhibit compassion." Book: A Page: 01 Byline: ANDREW WOLFSON From: Source: Publication: The Courier-Journal Correction: He has been lampooned in Doonesbury as a member of the "Carcinogen Seven." The Justice Department has been asked to explore whether he and his six fellow tobacco company chieftains may have committed perjury and their companies fraud. U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman has all but called him a liar for swearing under oath that he doesn't believe nicotine is addictive when Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.'s own top lawyer said it was in a company memo three decades ago. He started out in the industry 31 years ago, peddling cigars and chewing tobacco in the North Georgia mountains for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Today, Thomas Edwin Sandefur Jr. presides over a $3.4 billion company that last year sold 91 billion cigarettes. But until an embarrassing cache of internal corporate documents, which Brown & Williamson says were stolen, ended up in stories on the front pages of American newspapers last month, Sandefur ruled in virtual obscurity from the 26th floor of Louisville's Brown & Williamson Tower. As an industry leader, he's been virtually invisible; Kidder Peabody & Co. analyst Stephen Long calls him the "closet smoker" of tobacco company chief executives. He has cut nearly as low a profile in Louisville, where before this spring, his picture had been published only once in 12 years in this newspaper -- and where he toiled mostly in the background as a fund-raiser for a handful of civic causes. "Center stage is not his favorite place," said Bill Samuels Jr., president of Maker's Mark Distillery Inc. Inside the company, he is regarded as a marketing wizard who launched America's second-best- selling discount cigarette, GPC Approved, and as a stickler for quality who idolizes Lee Iacocca and who personally returns phone calls from consumers who complain about stale cigarettes. But former employees at every level say he is even better known as a brutally demanding and volatile executive who is legendary for shouting and swearing at subordinates. "The vast majority of employees are scared to death of the man," said Brian Stauss, a former client systems manager. "I have never seen the man exhibit compassion." A longtime smoker, Sandefur stopped three or four years ago, former employees say. But friends and former subordinates describe him as a tobacco hard-liner who's never expressed misgivings about his role in producing a product that the federal Centers for Disease Control says kills 418,000 Americans a year. He has scoffed at the notion that nicotine is addictive, noting that the U.S. Surgeon General once proclaimed that children were addicted to video games. Asked by a member of Waxman's subcommittee on health and the environment what he would tell his children about smoking, Sandefur responded simply that he doesn't have any. He insists smokers and non-smokers can get along "just fine just on the basis of mutual respect" - - and on that basis he said he supports smoking and no-smoking sections in restaurants and public places. But he seemed to show little sympathy when a 7-year-old boy described to the Waxman panel how he can't bowl because the smoke at alleys aggravates his asthma. "I get sick and . can't breathe very well," the child, Robert Funches, testified. "When I smell it, I cough a lot and my eyes get red and real puffy. I also get headaches." What would Sandefur tell Robert, asked Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. "I would suggest," Sandefur testified, "that Robert's parents tell him there are things in life that he's going to come into contact with in growing up that he doesn't have control over because we live in a free society and we have choices to make, and smokers have choices, as well as non- smokers, to be around people who smoke." - He is intensely private, 5 feet 8 inches tall, and goes by the name Tommy -- on Capitol Hill, inside Brown & Williamson and on the answering machine at his apartment at 1400 Willow. He's been married for 29 years to a minister's daughter, the former Crawford Annette Meginniss of Dothan, Ala., but she lives in Florida, former Brown & Williamson employees say. One of his best friends is Larry Walker, Democratic majority leader of the Georgia state House of Representatives, and he's also friends with Democratic U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn. But Sandefur is a registered Republican and has been since at least the mid-1960s. He has sprinkled a handful of contributions on state and local candidates of both parties in Kentucky, but he voted only once from 1989 to 1993 -- in the 1992 presidential election. He's lived abroad -- in Geneva, among other places -- and he's described as a fashionable dresser who likes tailored suits and french cuffs. He drives a Mercedes and was driving a Jaguar in January 1990 when arrested for drunken driving. He later pleaded guilty and paid $362.50 in fines and costs. His uncompromising views on secondhand smoke might appear ironic in light of his personal health. Afflicted with aplastic anemia, a rare blood disease that makes him susceptible to infection, he has had an air-filtration system installed in his office and has on occasion toured Brown & Williamson facilities wearing a surgical mask. A former Eagle Scout, he has given generous amounts of time and money to Boy Scouts. And as a member of the Louisville Orchestra's executive committee, he once played an instrumental role in forging a hard-fought contract with musicians. But while his Brown & Williamson brands such as Kool and Viceroy are well known, he isn't. And those who know him say that's the way he likes it. "I ran into him at the Pendennis Club the other day at lunch and asked how he was doing," said Samuels of Maker's Mark. "He said, `I'm doing great. I'm not in Doonesbury today.' " - His voice is still thick with the slow drawl of his central Georgia home in Perry, which sits about 30 miles south of Brown & Williamson's Macon manufacturing plant. Perry was the kind of small Southern town where teen-age boys didn't smoke in the late 1950s, recalled Walker, a boyhood friend who was best man at Sandefur's wedding. Sandefur's father was the local manager for Georgia Power and a civil servant at Robins Air Force Base. (His parents, Thomas and Elsie, still live in Perry.) Young Sandefur worked as an embalmer at a local funeral home and cut grass at the cemetery, wrote the The Macon Telegraph in 1985. And he played lineman on his high school football team, despite his size. As a boy, he was playing once with a sister around a gas tank when it exploded, killing her and burning his face, said William Hobbs, who was later Sandefur's boss as chairman of Reynolds. After earning a business degree at Georgia Southern College, Sandefur was recruited by Reynolds as a salesman, but he quickly vaulted up the corporate ladder on the marketing side in a world far removed from tobacco barns and warehouses. "I'm not sure he knew what a leaf of tobacco was," recalled Hobbs, who is retired. With a ferocious drive and a genius for advertising and packaging, Sandefur forecast an emerging consumer demand for smoother, lighter products and launched a series of hugely successful low-tar brands, including NOW, Camel Lights and Vantage Ultra Lights, recalled Reynolds executive Gerald Long. At the same time, Sandefur developed his reputation as a fiercely tough and demanding manager, said Long, who succeeded Hobbs as Reynolds' chairman. "I always thought you got more out of people with sugar than with salt, but Tommy didn't quite believe it." With his heart set on running Reynolds -- but Long standing in his way -- Sandefur jumped to Brown & Williamson in 1982. He came aboard as senior vice president for international marketing, but, according to Long, with the understanding that he would soon run the company. Two years later he was named president. Tobacco stock analysts give him kudos for cutting costs; for carving out a strong niche for Brown & Williamson products in Japan; and for building the discount GPC Approved cigarette into the nation's fourth-best-selling brand overall. Faced with declining domestic consumption and price slashing by competitors, Sandefur also has presided over a corporate overhaul that has included a painful downsizing that has cost 700 people their jobs, 330 of them in Louisville. Inside his company, he is known for championing a massive "quality improvement program" that some former employees complain degenerated into an orgy of mandatory suggestion writing, but that others say triggered many small improvements. Sandefur says it has saved money and boosted employee involvement. Sandefur himself was so keen on quality guru Iacocca, the former Chrysler Corp. chairman, that he once assigned Brown & Williamson executives to read the automaker's autobiography, according to Dan Dant, a former director of international administration. Loyal former executives say Sandefur is a keen student of the global tobacco economy. They describe him as a workaholic and a stickler for accuracy and punctuality with a low tolerance for mistakes. Former corporate spokesman Mark Ahearn said, "I never knew the man to do anything other than work." Doug Keeney, an international marketing executive, said Sandefur is demanding but paternal: "He got as mad at me as he should when he needed to." Jeff Noel, who worked in governmental affairs, described Sandefur as a "consummate professional" and said Sandefur showed great interest in his career.