The $2 Million Man

They might not be violating the letter of the law; but to me they are violating the spirit of it.

Starting in 2000, John McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis, was paid $30,000 or more per MONTH for over 5 years as president of an 'advocacy' group (lobbyist organization) set up by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to try and prevent stricter regulations.

In an article published in the New York Times, current and former officials of the organizations confirmed this information.

Mr. Davis had recently returned to his lobbying firm from running Mr. McCain’s unexpectedly strong 2000 Republican primary campaign, which elevated Mr. McCain’s profile as a legislator and Mr. Davis’s as a lobbyist.

“The value that he brought to the relationship was the closeness to Senator McCain and the possibility that Senator McCain was going to run for president again,” said Robert McCarson, a former spokesman for Fannie Mae, who said that while he worked there from 2000 to 2002, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together paid Mr. Davis’s firm $35,000 a month."

In an interview Sunday night with CNBC and The New York Times, Mr. McCain noted that Mr. Davis was no longer working on behalf of the mortgage giants.

Let me get this straight - Rick Davis 'left' his own lobbying firm to work on John McCain's 2000 primary campaign. At the conclusion of the campaign in 2000 he went back to his lobbying career. He was hired by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to head up their lobbying effort and was paid something around $2 Million from 2000 through 2005 (when the lobbying effort was dissoved), primarily because of his close connection to John McCain and the possibility that McCain would run for President again. He then 'left' his own lobbying firm again to work on the McCain campaign.

There is nothing else to say. Clearly, McCain, supporter of the 1999 deregulation of the finance and banking industries, was the pick of Freddie and Fannie when it came to potential presidential candidates. The same lobbyist who was promoting the deregulation agenda to McCain in congress is now writing his campaign speeches and position papers.

McCain has the audacity to throw mud at Obama and Biden with false 'banking ties' ads.
What needs reform is John McCain; one of the infamous 'Keating 5' from the S&L debacle of a previous decade, who apparently hasn't learned his lesson.