Joe Conason in Salon
... many of his colleagues regard this great reformer as a preening phony. Although he has often displayed independence from the pressures of the capital, he has sometimes succumbed to those influences; and while he may seem to shun lobbyists, he actually surrounds himself with them.
Indeed, the McCain spokesmen who have mounted his aggressive counterthrust against the New York Times are lobbyists themselves, or at least that's what they do when they aren't speaking up for the integrity and incorruptibility of their candidate.Among the loudest McCain mouthpieces is Charlie Black, a seasoned Republican operative whose client roster dates back to such paragons as the late Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos and several African dictators, and more recently has featured Erik Prince, the mercenary entrepreneur who founded Blackwater. (Black's wife is a lobbyist too, and his firm, known as BKSH, is owned by Burson-Marsteller, the enormous P.R. conglomerate chaired by Hillary Clinton's top campaign advisor, Mark Penn.) McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, is also a lobbyist, whose client interests in the broadcasting and cable industry overlapped with those represented by Iseman and her firm, Alcalde & Fay. During the off years between presidential elections, Davis collected donations from companies regulated by the Senate Commerce Committee, chaired by his boss McCain, for the amusingly named "Reform Institute," which also paid handsome sinecures to Davis and various other McCain campaign consultants. McCain's chief fundraiser is Tom Loeffler, a prominent lobbyist and former Texas congressman whose clients range from PhRMA to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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