Nice to see people are starting to dig into McCain's record. The Straight Talking, clean legislating myth is just that - a myth - and the sooner the public realizes that, the better.
NYT:
Donald R. Diamond, a wealthy Arizona real estate developer, was racing to snap up a stretch of virgin California coast freed by the closing of an Army base a decade ago when he turned to an old friend, Senator John McCain.
When Mr. Diamond wanted to buy land at the base, Fort Ord, Mr. McCain assigned an aide who set up a meeting at the Pentagon and later stepped in again to help speed up the sale, according to people involved and a deposition Mr. Diamond gave for a related lawsuit. When he appealed to a nearby city for the right to develop other property at the former base, Mr. Diamond submitted Mr. McCain's endorsement as "a close personal friend."Writing to officials in the city, Seaside, Calif., the senator said, "You will find him as honorable and committed as I have."
Courting local officials and potential partners, Mr. Diamond's team promised that he could "help get through some of the red tape in dealing with the Department of the Army" because Mr. Diamond "has been very active with Senator McCain," a partner said in a deposition.
For Mr. McCain, the Arizona Republican who has staked two presidential campaigns on pledges to avoid even the appearance of dispensing an official favor for a donor, Mr. Diamond is the kind of friend who can pose a test.
A longtime political patron, Mr. Diamond is one of the elite fund-raisers Mr. McCain's current presidential campaign calls Innovators, having raised more than $250,000 so far. At home, Mr. Diamond is sometimes referred to as "The Donald," Arizona's answer to Donald Trump -- an outsized personality who invites public officials aboard his flotilla of yachts (the Ace, King, Jack and Queen of Diamonds), specializes in deals with the government, and unabashedly solicits support for his business interests from the recipients of his campaign contributions.
Mr. McCain has occasionally rebuffed Mr. Diamond's entreaties as inappropriate, but he has also taken steps that benefited his friend's real estate empire. Their 26-year relationship illuminates how Mr. McCain weighs requests from a benefactor against his vows, adopted after a brush with scandal two decades ago, not to intercede with government authorities on behalf of a donor or take other official action that serves no clear public interest.
In California, the McCain aide's assistance with the Army helped Mr. Diamond complete a purchase in 1999 that he soon turned over for a $20 million profit. And Mr. McCain's letter of recommendation reinforced Mr. Diamond's selling point about his McCain connections as he pursued -- and won in 2005 -- a potentially much more lucrative deal to develop a resort hotel and luxury housing.
And "The Donald" sounds like a real gem:
Mr. Diamond, for his part, said Mr. McCain had only done his job. "I think that is what Congress people are supposed to do for constituents," he said. "When you have a big, significant businessman like myself, why wouldn't you want to help move things along? What else would they do? They waste so much time with legislation."
But associates say he revels in his ability to "work the system," as his friend and sometimes partner, Stanley Abrams, put it: "Nobody is as connected as Donald."Mr. Diamond is close to most of Arizona's Congressional delegation and is candid about his expectations as a fund-raiser. "I want my money back, for Christ's sake. Do you know how many cocktail parties I have to go to?"
To raise money for Mr. McCain, Mr. Diamond invites local Republicans to make fund-raising calls from his Tucson office. Ray Carroll, a member of the council that controls zoning in Pima County, Ariz., said Mr. Diamond followed up on one fund-raising session with a thank-you note "on behalf of Mr. McCain," sending a copy to the senator.
"To reciprocate, if you need any zoning in the county, let me know," Mr. Diamond wrote. (Mr. Diamond said it was the kind of joke he often made.)
Mr. McCain has campaigned as a critic of the corrupting influence of money and politics, saying he had learned a lesson from a late 1980s scandal over his part in an intervention with banking regulators examining a savings and loan controlled by a patron, Charles Keating. Since then, Mr. McCain vowed to embrace ethics standards that set him apart from many colleagues.
"I have carefully avoided situations that might even tangentially be construed as a less than proper use of my office," he wrote in his memoir, "Worth the Fighting For" (Random House, 2002).
Mr. McCain once publicly criticized Mr. Diamond as lobbying too hard for his own financial interests. In 1995, Mr. McCain called it "unheard of" that Mr. Diamond had hired a Washington lobbyist to try to block construction of a federal building in Tucson that threatened to take away some of his rental income. "I didn't talk to him for one year," Mr. Diamond said of Mr. McCain. "I was annoyed."
... Though Mr. McCain helped with the Fort Ord deals, Mr. Diamond said, he still thinks that Mr. McCain is too worried about avoiding any appearance of a favor. "He doesn't bring home enough for the state," Mr. Diamond said. "It is a sore subject between us."
A year? My goodness! What a noble and honorable man that Senator McCain is. He went a whole year without talking to his ethically challenged friend! Such a noble sacrifice! Such a pillar of strength! Except:
Over the years, Mr. Diamond and his wife, Joan, visited the McCains at their ranch in Sedona, Ariz., and entertained them in their Tucson home and in the Bahamas, where Mr. Diamond sometimes keeps his 134-foot yacht, the Queen of Diamonds. In 2001, the two men attended a Yankees-Diamondback World Series game together. "He is just very, very good company," Mr. Diamond said of Mr. McCain. "I knew all his people and the staff."
Now to be perfectly clear about this, I'm not naive enough to think that Sen. McCain is the only one who behaves this way. I wish this sort of thing never happened in politics, but it does, and to some degree we must all accept that. What makes this different, however, is that McCain has deliberately cultivated an image as a truth teller who embodies all that is good, right, and ethical in politics. His entire public image is based on the idea that because of his character, this is something he would never do. It's a lie, of course, a sad fact most Americans have not yet recognized.
Will this story help? Honestly, I doubt it. For reasons that I cannot understand, the NYT decided to run this on the day of the PA primary. Had they waited a few days, it surely would have dominated the days news. But today? Today it will be sadly become an afterthought.
Amazing the way the liberal elite media favors its own, isn't it?
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