...McCain applied to be certified for federal matching money last year, when his campaign was running on fumes. But unlike former North Carolina senator John Edwards, McCain never actually took the federal funds. He was merely preserving that option. Once his campaign started to take off, he wrote to the FEC requesting to withdraw from the program.
The reply from the FEC, [short version: no] dated Feb. 19 and released by the FEC today, will almost certainly come as a shock to the campaign, which assumed McCain had withdrawn from the public system two weeks ago and was now free to spend money without regard to federal limits.
The reason this matters so much? Life within the public financing system, in which candidate contributions are matched with federal funds, comes with severe spending restrictions.
Restrictions that neither Obama nor Clinton have, because they did not take matching funds with their accompanying spending limits during the primary season.
NPR:
Then, McCain’s campaign fell on hard times. He applied for the primary-season matching funds. The Federal Election Commission approved the application, but McCain never cashed in his certificates.
Instead, McCain went to a bank and received a line of credit. As Potter notes, McCain did not put up the public-financing certificates as collateral.
But then the McCain campaign renegotiated for a bigger line of credit. The loan documents said that if McCain lost the New Hampshire primary and finished more than 10 points behind the winner, then he would have to stay in the race and reapply for public funds, which would become the new collateral.
Lawyer Cleta Mitchell has long criticized McCain’s role in overhauling campaign-finance laws. Pointing to the terms of the loan, she accuses McCain of gaming the system.
“They got another million dollars with, really, no additional collateral, other than a promise that if he didn’t do well, they’d go get it from the federal government,” Mitchell says.
Insert Campaign Finance Reform joke here, if there are any. McCain says it’s totally legal, but that’s like my neighbor saying his dog’s poop doesn’t stink and actually makes my lawn look better. He flip-flopped on whether he was going to use the funds, and then used the promise of matching funds as collateral for loans. It simply stinks, Senator.
No Trackbacks To ““Fresh Problem” for McCain…“
i throw up in my mouth a little when i think of mccain doing anything sexual. thank you, NY times for putting a horrid image in my head!
Your neighbor’s dog’s poop stinks.
Maybe he should get rid of his lawn, and get a Republican.
We need a(nother) con man like that to run the U.S. gubmint– /snark off/
I hope this starts his downfall. All that eye-blinking tells me he’s lying like a dog, and furthermore, it says he’s seldom been pressed to the wall, having to lie so hard on national teevee.
And then also used the broken promise to use matching funds to berate Obama about using matching funds.
Obama’s response should be to tell McCain to go to hell. Obama can easily reconcile that with his earlier encouragement to use federal matching funds. Obama can say that he was all for it back when he thought McCain was honorable about campaign finance reform. But McCain’s recent Texas Two-Step demonstrate that McCain is only interested in campaign finance reform if he can get his opponents to be constrained by it while using his inside knowledge of it (since he helped draft it) to weasel out of it.
Lest we forget, Cindy was McCain’s mistress before she became his current wife.
With Senator Mc Stinky’s admission that he and her were “friends” , , , we now know who he’s talkin’ 2 when he says : ” My Friends…” , LOBBYISTS !
so why is this clip some old thing about saving money at a holiday inn?
If McCain’s campaign has to conform to spending limits in the general that’s definitely where he’s staying… - BG
If McCain gets sunk, does that mean the Repub nominee would be Huckleberry? Egads. He could win!
McCain’s Mcfinancing might need a McTweek. Oh my. One thing after another. It’s a McNightmare on McElmStreet.
clintonesque?
Soooooo does this mean Mccain has been screwing tax payers out of money?
If I did that I believe it would be called fraud.
I also saw something earlier about his place on the Indiana ballot being challenged because he didn’t have enough signatures, but the state AG is his friend so they rubberstamped it.
ConcernedCanuck @ 8:
Ya know Mitts the Mormon suspended his try to be the next RePUBlicon king of America. The word was suspend. as in I might get back in this again.
Filthy Harry @ 13:
Well that a was just between friends, Like when in 2000 Cheney decided he was from Wyoming instead of Texas even though he hadn’t lived there since high school. that way they passed the exclusion of Pres and Vice-pres from the same state.
how much did holiday inn express pay for the commericial?
Does all this mean that ‘insane’ McCain is obligated to use Federal matching funds or does he still have wiggle room to get out of it and be funded as per Obama and Hillary?
That’s why john is making sounds like Obama “promised” to to use government funds for his campaign, he (McPain) is handicapped now and want Obama to be also.
Hey, I’ve got friends that I worked with that retired with a better fund than i did, should I ask them to share my bad fortune?
I johnnie didn’t plan right, then that’s his “B”
Bruce Wang, you beat me to it. I was going to ask if McCain’s new problem is that he didn’t stay in a Holiday Inn Express.
Well, they questioned John McCain’s Conservative bonafides and he showed them all, in spades. I’m mean, being actually ‘in bed’ with a lobbyist makes a pretty strong case for him being their guy.
mccain will be just a continuation of the same
stinky shit that already sits in the pres office now.
we have had our fill of lying bastards who want
to destroy the Constitution of the USA.
This is why he hit Obama last week on the”pledge.” He hoped to trap Obama into the same pit. He knew this was coming to come out soon, and hoped Obama would promise to join him.
“I hope this starts his downfall. All that eye-blinking tells me he’s lying like a dog, and furthermore, it says he’s seldom been pressed to the wall, having to lie so hard on national teevee.” (JudyLou)
You noticed that? It was pity-full! He looked like a husband who lies real well to his wife, but when he has to repeat the story to his mother, he wets his pants. I have never seen such a classic picture of “MAN LYING HIS ASS OFF” as McCain looked today answering questions at his press conf.
McCain on Thanksgiving: “And thank you, New York Times. Us warmongers can always count on you.”
“Now pass over that Lemming Pie. HAW HAW HAW.”
The Republic flag bearer McCain
Advocates things quite insane.
He left his sick wife
For the gravy-train life,
But by now age has rotted his brain.
I thought the product placement was in particularly poor taste. Proud to be American? More like having no shame.
Hey folks, you can take a look at this piece of legal artistry! It’s McCain’s double dipper loan document, 27 pages. Found it courtesy The American Prospect, http://www.prospect.org/csnc/b.....ics#104506
McCain’s double dipper loan. http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-b.....39612468+0 or the whole thing at http://images.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/fecimg/
But again, the NYT story did not say they had an affair. That was not the focus, for those who did not really read the whole piece. What worried the staff is someone who didn’t know could think they were and the staff was concerned for McCain’s image. That’s part of what handlers are paid to do - worry about how things seem versus how they really are.
McCain’s poor judgement is the issue of the story. He did not listen to his staff’s advice about lobbyist. In politics, the appearance of a problematic issue is something some are clearly more sensitive to than others. McCain brushed off the concerns of others that this could look bad. It does. It may not be worse, but it passes this test : he does not listen to good advice. The reminders of the Keating Five are better done now than later as well. Just as Hillary Clinton’s past faux pas will always be just a google away, here is an event some may have forgotten that again underline the problem of McCain’s Judgement and Reasoning. He seems naive in both situations - each a decade apart. So he didn’t improve with age.
Perhaps the corporate connection of Seattle’s PostIntelligencer is more the answer to why that paper felt too timid to print the McCain Lapse In Judgement story. That would be Hearst.
By the way, how can you find the hypocrisy in this event…
The San Francisco Chronicle did not choose to print the McCain / Judgement story from yesterday’s NYT and WaPo. (Even after Weaver was revealed as a legit source, btw.)
The San Francisco Chronicle had no problem printing a story about Huckabee’s wife going to a Vegas fight and staying at a Hooters Casino.
Aww. I just hate to see elderly people make bad financial decisions and screw up their futures. Poor, decrepit old thing.
Just read Bob Bennett’s defense of McCain’s lobbyista problems. Any chance Bob might tell us who smeared McCain in South Carolina primary in 1999? Maybe give us a name or two?
He probably blew it all on the lotto then took the loan to buy more lotto tickets. Old people get like that sometimes.
“The world’s a can
For your fresh garbage” - Spirit (’Fresh Garbage’)
http://technohippie.com/geeklo.....9193412990
I thought the NYTimes piece was too sketchy; they should have listed the names of the two former aids to make it more legit. Not that I don’t believe it’s true. Afterall, he’s already done both things–cheat on his wife & hop in bed with the lobbylists. I don’t understand why people (republicans mostly) are so outraged that the NYtimes would write such a thing. They automatically denouce it as lies & smears. You’d better believe if it were a Dem that the story was about they’d be all over it and never once think it was a hit piece. That’s the liberal media for ya.
We need to keep him in this because there must be lots of great “stuff” for the long campaign ahead. There’s nothing better than sticking it to a sanctimonious, smarmy, self-absorbed, sleaze.
“I don’t know if it’s accurate, but it’s interesting.”…gosh…news is so much fun
I hate the fact that there could be election fraud.
I hate the fact that Mccain is probably going to be the republican candidate!
I pray he makes another trip to Iraq and gets captured as a POW :-)
This man would wreck our country faster than bush can read my pet goat.
Brought to you by Holiday Inn Express.
Breaking news! McVain is corrupt! Blame the messenger!