Stray Cock Express: McCain Is Frequently in Bed with Lobbyists

Posted by Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake at 12:57 PM on February 21, 2008.

I've been watching cable news all morning and one of the things that strikes me is that they don't seem to grasp what the McCain/Iseman story is about. If this was just about Botox McCain getting lucky with some skinny lobbyist the campaign would probably be delighted to have it in the headlines to combat the "he's too old" meme that's gathering steam. It's not. It's about his relationship with a telecom lobbyist who boasted about her ability to professionally influence him in business situations, and whose lobbying interests McCain has taken clear action to help. It undermines all his "straight talk" crap about not taking money from lobbyists, which is why the campaign staff took action to keep her away from McCain:

John Weaver, a former top strategist and now an informal campaign adviser, said in an e-mail message that he arranged the meeting after "a discussion among the campaign leadership" about her.

"Our political messaging during that time period centered around taking on the special interests and placing the nation's interests before either personal or special interest," Mr. Weaver continued. "Ms. Iseman's involvement in the campaign, it was felt by us, could undermine that effort."

Mr. Weaver added that the brief conversation was only about "her conduct and what she allegedly had told people, which made its way back to us." He declined to elaborate.

It's Weaver's word versus McCain's word at this point. According to TNR:

[Weaver] adds that he talks with the McCain campaign every day, and that the campaign knew about his contact with the Times immediately after it happened. Weaver emphasizes that his only concern about Iseman was that she allegedly had been bragging around town about her influence with McCain (which is also how I read his quotes) and nothing more.

McCain, meanwhile, claims he knew nothing about Weaver's encounter with Iseman:

Mr. McCain said he knew nothing about an account in The Times from John Weaver, a former top strategist and now an informal campaign adviser, who told the newspaper that he met with Ms. Iseman at Union Station at the time of Mr. McCain's first run for president in 1999 and told her to stay away from the senator. "I don't know anything about it," Mr. McCain said. "Since it was in The New York Times, I don't take it at face value."

Reallly? That's pretty amazing, considering the campaign has been trying to spike the story since December.

The whole thing makes McCain look bad, like some old mouthpiece they wheel out to harumph about special interests and terra terra terra but doesn't really get much say about who he's allowed to see or what's going on.

All this pearl clutching on cable news, accusing the Times of "poor sourcing" in a sex scandal really misses several key points, not the least of which is that the part of the story they're obsessing about (alleged sex) isn't really the story at all.

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via Christy Hardin Smith @ FireDogLake:

St. John McVain has a dirty little secret. The vaunted "maverick" Senator who works tirelessly against corruption and undue lobbyist interest in Washington?

Sham. He's been in bed with lobbyists for quite some time.

Why do I say that? Well, there's this: McCain's campaign staff had more lobbyists on it than any other back in June. And, after the staff massacre in July, the person he hired to be his new campaign manager (resurrecting his position from the failed 2000 campaign)? Uber-lobbyist Rick Davis. Who is Rick Davis? Try this on for starters:

So now that very same Rick Davis will be taking over as campaign manager. Who is he? Fittingly for the most lobbyist-infested campaign in the race (on either side), Davis is yet another lobbyist. Davis founded Davis, Manafort & Freedman, Inc., through which he served clients ranging from Nigerian dictator Gen. Sani Abacha to "mafia-like" Argentine legislator Alberto Pierri. Davis has had a long association with McCain -- one tangled up in webs of special influence. In 1999, while Davis was working for McCain, two of his firm's clients, COMSAT and SBC, "had major (and controversial) mergers pending before the Federal Communications Commission in 1999, and both mergers were approved." The FCC was under the legislative oversight authority of McCain's Commerce Committee, yet McCain refused to recuse himself from the proceedings.

Davis was also a central figure in McCain's Reform Institute scandal, an under-reported affair in which the "Maverick" Senator used a nonprofit, tax-exempt "reform" organization to trade political favors for corporate cash. (emphasis mine)

Think this is a new development for St. McVain? That his scramble to win the GOP presidential nomination at all costs came at the price of climbing into bed with some DC lobbyists, that besmirching his otherwise squeaky clean, burnished image of integrity is a recent phenomenon? Think again:

In 2000, when McCain set out to seek the Republican Party's presidential nomination, his campaign charter jet landed in New Hampshire early on with some lobbyists aboard.

David Broder, dean of the politicial writers, was aboard that plane. And he duly noted the presence of Ken Duberstein, the lobbyist and former chief of staff for Ronald Reagan, aboard the plane of the senator running as the anti-establishment candidate.

Yours truly was on that plane, too, and duly noted the presence of Tom Panza, a Florida-based lobbyist for GTech, the lottery-management company that has mopped up contract after contract in the states running lotteries and provided lucrative employment for a lot of former state workers in the process.

After McCain trounced George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary, Bush retreated to Texas to refine his campaign message and reemerged as a "reformer with results'' -- attacking McCain as "the Chairman'' -- then chair of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee.

Bush won, McCain lost, and now McCain is back again, seeking the 2008 nomination -- with some lobbyists in tow again. (emphasis mine)

Funny how Rove came up with a line of attack against McVain that centered around his chairmanship of the Commerce Committee. One wonders how it is that the NYTimes story came to be seeded by multiple former McCain staffers. But I digress...

As Attaturk highlighted this morning, one of the McCain camps chief mouthpieces on this story has been Charlie Black. You know good ole Charlie, don't you?

Charlie Black, a lobbyist who is a senior strategist for the McCain campaign, said he's so often involved in presidential campaigns that he considers lobbying his "second career."

"Most lobbyists who devote a lot of time to it are politicos who did that before they got into lobbying," said Mr. Black, who worked for former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush and now lobbies for AT&T, lottery contractor Gtech and General Motors. (emphasis mine)

Funny how all that telecom money seems to be swimming around the yacht parties that McVain frequented, jetting down on private planes to hobnob with the influence peddling crowd he calls friends and staffers, isn't it? From several telecom lobbyists to the WaPo:

Three telecom lobbyists and a former McCain aide, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Iseman spoke up regularly at meetings of telecom lobbyists in Washington, extolling her connections to McCain and his office. She would regularly volunteer at those meetings to be the point person for the telecom industry in dealing with McCain's office.

Concern about Iseman's presence around McCain at one point led to her being banned from his Senate office, according to sources close to McCain. Senior McCain aide Mark Salter, in an e-mail, denied that Iseman was ever barred from the office or was even a frequent presence there....

In the years that McCain chaired the commerce committee, Iseman lobbied for Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson, the head of what used to be Paxson Communications, now Ion Media Networks, and was involved in a successful lobbying campaign to persuade McCain and other members of Congress to send letters to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Paxson.

In late 1999, McCain wrote two letters to the FCC urging a vote on the sale to Paxson of a Pittsburgh television station. The sale had been highly contentious in Pittsburgh and involved a multipronged lobbying effort among the parties to the deal.

At the time he sent the first letter, McCain had flown on Paxson's corporate jet four times to appear at campaign events and had received $20,000 in campaign donations from Paxson and its law firm. The second letter came on Dec. 10, a day after the company's jet ferried him to a Florida fundraiser that was held aboard a yacht in West Palm Beach. (emphasis mine)

Much, much more on this to come...you can bet on it.

Tagged as: conservatives, mccain, republican party, buchanan, lobbying, republican hypocrisy, adultery, iseman

Jane Hamsher is the founder of FireDogLake. Her work has also appeared on the Huffington Post, Alternet and The American Prospect.