WASHINGTON — Aides to Sen. John McCain confronted a telecommunications lobbyist in late 1999 and asked her to distance herself from the senator during the presidential campaign he was about to launch, according to one of McCain’s longest-serving political strategists.
John Weaver, who was McCain’s closest confidant until leaving his current campaign last year, said he met with Vicki Iseman and urged her to stay away from McCain.
Association with a lobbyist would undermine his image as an opponent of special interests, aides had concluded.
Members of the senator’s small circle of advisers also confronted McCain directly, according to sources, warning him that his continued ties to a lobbyist who had business before the powerful Senate Commerce Committee he chaired threatened to derail his presidential ambitions.
The New York Times published a lengthy article on its website Wednesday night detailing McCain’s ties to Iseman.
“A clear 24-year record”
“It’s a shame that the New York Times has chosen to smear John McCain like this,” said Charles Black, a top adviser to McCain’s current presidential campaign and the head of the Washington lobbying firm BKSH & Associates. “Neither Sen. McCain nor the campaign will dignify false rumors and gossip by responding to them. John McCain has never done favors for anyone, not lobbyists or any special interest. That’s a clear 24-year record.”
The McCain team issued a statement Wednesday night decrying “gutter politics” and saying the story — which had been reported on the Drudge Report website in December — was a “a hit and run smear campaign.”
Iseman, 40, often touted her access to the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee as she worked on behalf of clients, according to several other lobbyists who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
McCain, after his unsuccessful 2000 campaign, has emerged as the front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. His reputation as a crusader for Washington reform is largely based on his stinging critiques of the role played by lobbyists. He routinely decries earmarks, or special pork projects inserted into legislation. He has claimed repeatedly that he has “never, ever” done a favor for anyone. It was that reputation that McCain’s closest aides sought to protect.
“We were running a campaign about reforming Washington, and her showing up at events and saying she had close ties to McCain was harmful,” said one aide.
Iseman could not be reached at her home or office Wednesday night. But in the Times story, Iseman wrote in an e-mail that “I never discussed with him alleged things I had ‘told people,’ that had made their way ‘back to’ him.” The Times reported that she said she never received special treatment from McCain or his office.
“Unusual” letters to FCC
Three telecom lobbyists and a former McCain aide, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Iseman spoke up regularly at meetings of telecom lobbyists in Washington, extolling her connections to McCain and his office.
Iseman’s bio on her lobbying firm’s website notes, “She has extensive experience in telecommunications, representing corporations before the House and Senate Commerce Committees.”
In the years that McCain chaired the Commerce Committee, Iseman lobbied for Lowell “Bud” Paxson, the head of what used to be Paxson Communications, now Ion Media Networks, and was involved in a successful lobbying campaign to persuade McCain and other members of Congress to send letters to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Paxson.
McCain had flown on Paxson’s corporate jet multiple times to appear at campaign events and had received $20,000 in campaign donations from Paxson and its law firm.
McCain has argued that the letters he wrote merely urged a decision and did not call for action on Paxson’s behalf. But when the letters became public, William Kennard, chairman of the FCC at the time, denounced them as “highly unusual.”
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, it incorrectly said that Iseman represented Cablevision, EchoStar and Tribune Broadcasting.
