McCain National Finance Co-Chair Bites the Dust

In the McCain camp, the staffers are dropping like flies. At this pace, John McCain might run out of staff before November.

John McCain's national finance co-chairman has stepped down, the latest casualty of a presidential campaign eager to cauterize damage caused by its ties to lobbyists.

Former Texas Rep. Thomas G. Loeffler, one of McCain's key fundraisers, resigned in the wake of a new McCain policy on conflicts of interest that required campaign volunteers to disclose their lobbying connections.

Thomas Loeffler, a lobbyist for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and longtime friend of John McCain, joins four others, including Doug Goodyear (McCain's hand-picked RNC convention coordinator who lobbied with the DCI Group on behalf of the repressive military junta in Burma) and Doug Davenport (a regional campaign manager who oversaw the DCI Group's lobbying contract with the Burmese junta in 2002).

The departures from after John McCain sent campaign manager (and lobbyist who worked for a pro-Putin party in the Ukraine last year) Rick Davis to fix the problem.

"Sen. McCain asking his lobbyist pal Rick Davis to 'clean the lobbyists' out of his campaign is like a farmer asking a fox to guard the henhouse," said DNC spokesman Damien LaVera. [link added]

The series of resignations from key staffers from the campaign is an incredible black eye for McCain. Their response?

Everybody must comply with the policy," campaign communications director Jill Hazelbaker said. "The campaign will not comment further on individual staff members."

You heard that right -- Mr. Transparency's campaign is now operating on radio silence on the issue lest we know about all the others that had conflicts of interest, or unsavory former clients.

Comments (0)

Post a comment