Speaking before reporters in a dingy hotel ballroom in Toledo, Ohio, where the senator is campaigning today, McCain described Vicki Iseman, a Washington lobbyist who represented companies with business before the Senate Commerce Committee, which McCain once chaired, as a “friend.”
He denied a report in The New York Times that suggested he had done favors for one of Iseman’s clients, Paxson Communications, which donated money to McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign and allowed him to fly on its corporate jets at a cut rate. His campaign called the article, which the paper had been working on since last fall, a “smear.”
“I am very disappointed in the article,” McCain said. “It’s not true. I have served this nation honorably for more than a half a century … and at no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust or make a decision which in any way would not be in the public interest and favor anyone or any organization.”
The Times and a follow-up report in the Washington Post quoted anonymous former aides to McCain who said they had urged the senator to stay away from Iseman out of fear that their relationship would hurt his political career. “Some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself,” the Times reported in Thursday’s paper, citing anonymous aides as saying they had sought to block Iseman’s access.
John Weaver, a longtime aide to McCain who dramatically split with the senator’s campaign last year, told the Times and the Post that he had met with Iseman in 2000 and asked her to stay away from McCain after a “discussion among campaign leadership” about her—a charge that current campaign aides, including Mark Salter, McCain’s longest serving aide, strongly deny.
“Only one staffer had the authority and the ability to ban a person from the office or tell staffers or the senator to keep their distance from someone, [and that] was me,” Salter told NEWSWEEK. “I never did, and I never had a reason to.” Asked if he was aware of Weaver’s conversation with Iseman, Salter said no. “Weaver never discussed it with me or McCain,” he said.
On Thursday McCain echoed Salter’s denials, telling reporters he had no knowledge of Weaver’s meeting with Iseman and saying he had never had any discussions with his former aide about her or any other lobbyist. Asked if Weaver, whom McCain repeatedly described as a “good friend,” had told him or any of his aides about his conversations with the Times or the Post, McCain said no. “I never discussed it with John Weaver,” McCain said. “As far as I know, there was no necessity for it … I did not know anything about it.”
Weaver did not return an e-mail from NEWSWEEK seeking comment.
The story revives a controversy that dogged McCain during his failed run for the presidency in 2000. In late 1999 McCain twice wrote letters to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Paxson Communications, a Florida-based telecom company that had retained Iseman as a lobbyist. The company had been attempting to purchase a Pittsburgh television station and was seeking a quick resolution to the deal. Paxson employees, including top executive Bud Paxson, were major contributors to the McCain campaign, having ponied up more than $20,000 in support of his presidential effort. Federal Election Commission records show that McCain also flew on Paxson’s corporate jet four times, for which the McCain campaign reimbursed the company almost $8,000.
In his letters to the FCC, McCain did not urge the agency to approve the Paxson deal but rather urged them to speed up consideration of the deal, which had been pending for nearly two years. Still, then-FCC chairman William Kennard, who had occasionally clashed with McCain during his tenure as Commerce Committee chair, complained that the senator’s request “could have procedural and substantive impacts” on the committee’s deliberations and on the “due process rights” of those involved.
When word of McCain’s letters went public, the senator denied wrongdoing and released letters he had written as chairman of the Commerce Committee to federal agencies to buttress his argument that he hadn’t shown favor to Paxson or any other campaign contributors.
Last fall, according to McCain aides, the New York Times inquired about McCain’s relationship with Iseman and her clients. At one point the back-and-forth between the paper and the campaign became so heated that McCain retained Bill Bennett, a well-known Washington attorney specializing in scandal (Bennett represented President Bill Clinton in legal battles arising from the Paula Jones case), and appealed directly to Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times. On Thursday McCain denied that he had tried to kill the story and described his dealings with Keller as “trying to find out what was going on.”
Though the paper had delayed publishing the article, details of the story were leaked to the Drudge Report, prompting McCain and his aides to try to dismiss the matter before the storyline could take hold. “Gutter politics,” the campaign declared.
Upon word that the story was set to publish, the campaign rushed to respond. Salter and another top aide, Steve Schmidt, traveled to Ohio to join their boss on the road, while emissaries, including Bennett and campaign adviser Charlie Black, hit the airwaves. During an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show, Bennett said he and the campaign had provided the Times with numerous examples of instances in which McCain went against the interests of Iseman’s clients and other clients of her firm—and complained that the paper’s story did not mention those. Other McCain allies also took aim at the Times, a newspaper often reviled as a liberal beacon by conservatives—and it is possible that the story may help rally some on the right, who have had their problems with the maverick McCain, to the candidate’s side.
At the news conference Thursday morning Schmidt and Salter looked on, expressionless, as their boss spoke to reporters. At the microphone Cindy McCain stood inches away from her husband’s left shoulder, a smile frozen on her face. Asked to comment, she told reporters that she trusts her husband. “He’s a man of great character,” she declared.
Minutes later McCain walked away from the microphone, hand in hand with his wife.
