Attorney General Gary King says a recent Wall Street Journal editorial accusing him of being part of "a nationwide 'pay-to-sue' operation" got some key facts wrong about his 2006 campaign contributions.

The paper in mid-April suggested that King was involved in the alleged scheme because Houston lawyer Kenneth Bailey or his law firm donated $50,000 to the New Mexico attorney general, in addition to making donations to other Democratic politicians.

The editorial said Bailey also enlisted states to join in a "pre-packaged lawsuit" against a pharmaceutical company, adding pressure on the defendant in the case.

However, King said Monday that the donation to his campaign actually came from a law firm in which Bailey was no longer a partner, even though his name was still on the letterhead.

"The author of the article apparently assumed that contributions from the Williams-Bailey law firm to the campaign could be attributed to Kenneth Bailey," King wrote in a statement Monday. "In fact, Mr. Bailey left that firm in 2004, two years prior to the decision by the firm to contribute. Pursuant to a prior agreement, the firm kept the Bailey name on the letterhead for a period of time, even though Mr. Bailey no longer participated in the firm."

Bailey, now with a firm called Bailey, Perrin & Bailey, is suing Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, on behalf of New Mexico and several other states. The suit involves an anti-psychotic drug called Risperdal and contends the company hid dangerous side effects of the drug and wrongly marketed it to elderly people and children. The state purchased Risperdal through the Medicaid program, King said.

King said the state originally joined the suit in 2006 — the year before he succeeded Patricia Madrid as attorney general. Last year, he said, Bailey's contract was extended. Though the contract extension didn't go out to bid, King said, initially there had been a competitive bidding process for the Janssen case.

King said Bailey started Bailey, Perrin, Bailey in 2005 and that "is the entity that entered into a contract with my predecessor to represent the State of NM in the suit involving Janssen Pharmaceuticals. This is also the firm that was awarded the follow-on contract from my administration. Neither this firm nor Mr. Bailey have ever contributed to my campaign for AG."

In Pennsylvania, one of the other states suing the drug company, Gov. Ed Rendell has gotten in political hot water over large campaign contributions and free jet rides from Bailey. Soon after the contributions, Bailey signed a sole-source, contingency-fee contract with the state through Rendell's office to sue Janssen. The Pennsylvania attorney general had refused to take the case.

King said he's upset by the "pay-to-sue" allegations, which he has called part of an effort by business interests to discourage lawsuits filed on behalf of consumers.

"As an attorney and elected official I have to wonder how one deals with the publication of false information by an uninformed author," King wrote. "I have made significant efforts to address this misinformation, perhaps naively thinking that once the facts were given and then independently verified, the allegations of some sort of sinister 'scheme' would end. Instead, some people continued to parrot the initial falsehoods without checking the facts and produced editorials taking me to task for things that never happened."

An e-mail to the Wall Street Journal editorial board seeking comment wasn't immediately returned Monday evening.

Contact Kate Nash at 986-3036 or knash@sfnewmexican.com. Read her blog at www.greenchilechatter.com.