McCain (Still) K Street

Almost two years ago, clean government advocacy groups were complaining that McCain, who had long talked the talk about lobbying reform, was playing "a smaller leadership role on the issue than they had expected." He wanted to curry favor with the lobbyists in advance of a presidential run, you see, so he abandoned the hardline for a more, ahem, receptive attitude, because that's the way mavericks roll and shit.

So it's no real surprise that he's now K Street's Man.

McCain's appearance at the Deer Valley event, arranged by J.P. Morgan Vice Chairman James B. Lee Jr., a top McCain fundraiser, put him in a room with the chief executives of companies such as General Electric, Xerox and Sony. It was, Lee said, "a chance for him to let them see him for who he is and possibly decide to support him." The effort paid off: J.P. Morgan executives have donated $56,250 to McCain's campaign, two-thirds of which came after his Utah appearance. And his visit there was quickly followed up by dozens of smaller private meetings with corporate executives in New York City arranged by leading Wall Street figures.

"We tried to get him around to a lot of those kinds of things," said McCain campaign manager Rick Davis. "We were very much in the friend-making business."

That's the understatement of the year. McCain, who continually brags about his reform efforts against lobbyist money corrupting Beltway politics, is, hilariously, the most lobbied-up candidate in the race, with 32 "lobbyist bundlers" passing him donations, almost twice as many as Clinton.

McCain's campaign has also been guided by lobbyists. Davis, the campaign manager, is a former lobbyist who represented major telecommunications companies. The campaign's senior adviser is Charles R. Black Jr., chairman of BKSH & Associates, which represents drug companies, an oil company, an automaker, a telecommunications company, defense contractors and the steel industry, among others.

Former congressman Tom Loeffler (R-Tex.) was brought in to shore up the campaign's finances and operations. Yet he maintains his day job as chairman of the Loeffler Group, whose clients include oil, auto and telecommunications companies, as well as a tobacco firm and an airline.

Other occasional McCain advisers include lobbyists Timothy P. McKone of AT&T, Robert S. Aiken of Phoenix-based Pinnacle West Capital, John W. Timmons of the Cormac Group and John Green of Ogilvy Government Relations. Also at Ogilvy is a major McCain fundraiser, Wayne L. Berman.

Their firms' clients have been a significant source of contributions to McCain's campaign. Executives for the clients of Ogilvy Government Relations gave at least $271,000 for McCain's presidential bid. Loeffler Group client employees donated $118,500, according to a Washington Post analysis. BKSH clients' executives gave $24,000.

Also hilariously, McCain's lobbyist campaign manager suggests that, despite all the lobbytacular lobbyosity of the campaign, McCain's position on lobbying reform hasn't changed, that he can't be bought by lobbyists, that the lobbyists know that he can't be bought, that "If you give to him, you know there's no quid pro quo. People give to him because they want him to be president of the United States. They can't be motivated by any other reason." Of course not.

And wherever would they get such an idea, anyway? If McCain says he isn't held in thrall to lobbyists, then he isn't, because everyone knows he's the engineer of the Straight Talk Express! Oh, pardon me—the all-new Mr. Cluck's Chicken Shack Brand Straight Talk Express^TM.



"John—put on the chicken head or we'll lose the sponsorship! It's part of the deal!"
As I was saying, I've no idea where lobbyists could have gotten the idea that McCain was a tool. Err, their tool.

McCain's conduct as chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee between 1997 and 2004 has occasionally raised questions about whether he took actions to benefit major contributors to his political network, which included his Senate and presidential campaign committees, his Straight Talk political action committee and a foundation that he helped start called the Reform Institute.

In 2003 and 2004, for example, McCain took two actions favorable to Cablevision, the cable TV company, while Davis, his chief political strategist at the time, solicited the company for a total of $200,000 for the Reform Institute, a tax-exempt group that advocated an end to outsize political donations.

Davis solicited an initial donation from Cablevision chief Charles Dolan a week after Dolan testified before the Senate Commerce Committee in favor of a position backed by McCain. Davis said there was no connection between the testimony and the solicitation.

Less than a year later, McCain wrote to the Federal Communications Commission recommending Cablevision's position on cable pricing, citing Dolan by name. Cablevision followed soon thereafter with a second $100,000 donation, the Associated Press reported.

Huh. What a coinkydink.



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