Lobbyist connections dog McCain in race
WASHINGTON (AP) — John McCain’s latest campaign angst, this time over his ties to lobbyists, is putting the Republican in conflict with his carefully honed, decades-old reformer image. It’s also giving Democratic rival Barack Obama an opening to paint him as nothing more than a creature of Washington.
“The fact is, John McCain’s campaign is being run by Washington lobbyists and paid for by their money,” Obama argued Monday in Billings, Mont. — far from the Beltway. “I’m not in this race to continue the special interest-driven politics of the last eight years, I’m in this race to end it.”
McCain, for his part, is trying to stem the woes from his lobbyist links.
“We have enacted the most comprehensive and most transparent policy concerning lobbyist activities, and I challenge Senator Obama to adopt a similar policy,” the likely GOP presidential nominee said Monday in Savannah, Ga., several days after he rolled out new conflict-of-interest guidelines that triggered the departures of several campaign staffers due to their lobbying ties, including some to foreign governments.
Though Democrats have fueled the turmoil, it’s partly of McCain’s making.
He has tried to straddle two worlds, being both a four-term senator known as a fighter of special interests and a candidate whose campaign has employed people with long records of lobbying. That duel role is proving problematic.
To be sure, it’s hard to find anyone in Washington who isn’t connected in some way to special interests. Even Obama, who doesn’t take money from federal lobbyists, isn’t pure on the issue.
But McCain has set himself apart as a crusader, taking on the Boeing Co. over a tanker deal and going after lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s influence-peddling activities. And, that record has made the involvement of one-time lobbyists in his campaign all the more politically toxic, particularly when the public craves change and his Democratic opponent promises a new type of politics.
This isn’t the first time McCain’s reformer image has been tested.
He was a leading author of legislation to limit the influence of money in campaigns, but the Federal Election Commission challenged him when he tried to bypass the public financing system for this year’s primary. In 2001, McCain founded a nonprofit group to advocate for his campaign finance issues.
But when the media disclosed that the Reform Institute accepted $200,000 from a cablevision company that had legislative issues before McCain’s Senate committee, McCain cut his connection.