owclaw’s blog

NYT: McCain’s team erupted over his relationship with female lobbyist

Oh boy, an all-but-certain Republican nominee who allegedly can’t keep it in his pants…my, my, what else can expect in this election year? In a lengthy NYT piecethat has been in the works for some time — John McCain’s staffers in 2000 were so concerned about the 71-year-old Arizona senator’s relationship with Vicki Iseman, a 40-year-old lobbyist, that they told him to put the kibosh on contact with her on multiple occasions. Toss in some ethical issues — she had clients who donated to his campaign. This has to be causing agita in the Tool’s 2008 camp. Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers. A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, in his offices and aboard a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself – instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity. When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement. …The lobbyist, a partner at the firm Alcalde & Fay, represented telecommunications companies for whom Mr. McCain’s commerce committee was pivotal. Her clients contributed tens of thousands of dollars to his campaigns. Mr. Black said Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman were friends and nothing more. But in 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, “Why is she always around?” That February, Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman attended a small fund-raising dinner with several clients at the Miami-area home of a cruise-line executive and then flew back to Washington along with a campaign aide on the corporate jet of one of her clients, Paxson Communications. By then, according to two former McCain associates, some of the senator’s advisers had grown so concerned that the relationship had become romantic that they took steps to intervene. A former campaign adviser described being instructed to keep Ms. Iseman away from the senator at public events, while a Senate aide recalled plans to limit Ms. Iseman’s access to his offices. In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others. Just imagine all the moralist McCain haters on the far right are thinking right about now. Will this hand the nomination to Pastor Huckabee? All kinds of bad jokes come to mind — was the lobbying horizontal or vertical? Was he lobbying to be the next Viagra spokesman? Is there a not-so-hidden meaning to “Straight Talk Express? McCain’s interesting response is after the jump. From ABCNews, a stock response that denies any impropriety in regards to the “lobbying,” but skirts the issue of infidelity:McCain Communications Director Jill Hazelbaker released this statement to the press: “It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this
Usefull links: Espn tv, February 20, Floyd mayweather jr., February 18, Mary kay letourneau