WASHINGTON — Ed Kavanaugh is proof that beauty and politics needn’t be odd bedfellows.
Kavanaugh is set to retire next month as chief of the Cosmetic Toiletry and Fragrance Association, the beauty and personal care products’ lobbying arm in Washington. He joined CTFA in 1972 at 31 as a lobbyist and became the association’s president in 1983. He’ll preside over his final CTFA annual meeting starting on Wednesday in Boca Raton, Fla.
From his perch, Kavanaugh has gone to bat for beauty on an array of issues, from fighting Capitol Hill accusations that hair dye is potentially cancer causing to curbing Food and Drug Administration efforts to regulate alpha hydroxy acid face peels as if they were drugs, not cosmetics.
“It’s been a great run,” said Kavanaugh, 63, recently in an interview in his CTFA corner office in downtown Washington. Since Kavanaugh joined CTFA 23 years ago, the cosmetics industry has seen its business balloon in terms of products and sales. Last year, U.S. cosmetics and toiletry retail sales were $46.6 billion, up from $5.8 billion in 1972, according to Kline & Co., a market research concern. CTFA’s members come from all corners of the industry, including heavy hitters such as Procter & Gamble, the Estée Lauder Cos. and L’Oréal’s U.S. and French branches.
A large part of the CTFA’s job is to keep an eye on the FDA. By law, cosmetics don’t have to be approved by the FDA before they’re marketed. But at the same time, it’s unlawful to sell a beauty product that could be injurious or cross the regulatory line by changing the “structure or function” of the body, such as an antiwrinkle cream claiming to go beyond minimizing the appearance of facial lines and eliminate them altogether.
Wrangling over the cosmetics versus drug distinction has been particularly heated in the last two decades as beauty companies launched new lines of antiaging creams such as AHAs. And Kavanaugh and CTFA’s team of scientists and lawyers have been instrumental in persuading regulators to continue viewing these products as cosmetics.
At the same time, Kavanaugh has lobbied on behalf of FDA regulators who scrutinize the industry, pressing Congress to continue funding the agency’s cosmetics office in the face of federal budget cuts. The theory behind advocating for CTFA’s adversary: By keeping a strong regulatory presence over the industry, other potential critics, such as consumer activists, will have less reason to cry foul.
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“We need just enough regulation,” said Kavanaugh, ranking the seemingly mundane issue of the FDA’s cosmetics budget as one of CTFA’s crucial accomplishments under his tenure.
Kavanaugh said his insistence that cosmetics-industry presidents and chief executive officers be involved with the CTFA’s government agenda also has been key, since members of Congress and the administration often aren’t swayed unless they hear directly from a large employer. “It’s one of the great secrets of CTFA’s success,” Kavanaugh said.
Andrea Jung, chairman of the board and ceo of Avon Products Inc., who also chairs the CTFA’s board, agrees with the strategy, which has created “a united presence, as opposed to each of us building a presence on the Hill.”
“Ed clearly has been a leader. He has been CTFA and has had a lot of vision and passion in pulling the industry together,” Jung said.
As for Kavanaugh’s lobbying style, Peter Barton Hutt, the longtime outside counsel to CTFA, called the association’s chief “persistent,” a quality important for handling spats that can take years to resolve, such as convincing regulators of the safety of AHA products. “He’s not an arm-twister. He’s just simply straightforward, very factual. He doesn’t equivocate,” Hutt said.
Also key to being a lobbyist and association chief in Washington has been keeping those in power close, said Kavanaugh, who’s used his passion for golf as one means to get to know Capitol Hill lawmakers and administration officials during seven U.S. presidencies.
Golfing “is the right time and place to build relationships before you need to see people on particular issues,” said Kavanaugh, whose office is decorated with framed photos of political luminaries past and present on the greens. However, Kavanaugh said lobbying should never interfere with a game. “Absolutely never,” said Kavanaugh, who has a 9 handicap.
One former golf partner was the late and legendary Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill (D., Mass.), who proved instrumental in setting up a 1986 meeting between Kavanaugh and then-Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone.
Kavanaugh had remarked to O’Neill how cooperation between the U.S. and Japanese cosmetics industries could be a model for overcoming a knotty trade war between the countries. Kavanaugh was about to travel to Japan to meet with his counterparts there and was seeking, unsuccessfully, a meeting with Nakasone.
Without Kavanaugh prompting, O’Neill made a few calls, and a meeting with Nakasone was set. “Probably one of my smarter political moves was to then invite the president of the Japanese cosmetics association to go with me,” Kavanaugh said. Nakasone was impressed by the camaraderie and began the long process of opening the Japanese market to the sale of U.S. beauty products.
Another historic international moment for Kavanaugh was in 1985 at a Paris dinner thrown by the French cosmetics industry. Then-Mayor Jacques Chirac surprised Kavanaugh with the prestigious Medal of the City, which made him an honorary citizen of Paris.
Among Kavanaugh’s achievements is spearheading the launch in 1989 of CTFA’s Look Good Feel Better program directed at cancer patients. Cosmetics companies annually donate more than $10 million worth of beauty products and other services to help patients regain their self-esteem.
Looking forward, Kavanaugh and his wife, Martha Gamble, a retired Maryland judge, plan to divide their time between their homes in Key Largo, Fla., and the Eastern Shore of Maryland in St. Michaels. After spending more than three decades parsing rules of government, he also is toying with the idea of studying the intricate rules of golf and becoming a U.S. Golf Association-certified official. The Kavanaughs also are expecting their first grandchild, following the marriage last year of their son, Brett, an attorney and staff secretary to President Bush, who married Bush’s longtime personal assistant, Ashley Estes.
As for the cosmetics industry, more battles await Kavanaugh’s successor, who is expected to be named soon. On the front burner are several bills in the hopper of the California legislature that could restrict use of certain widely used cosmetics ingredients seen as potentially cancer causing.