USA Today reported on March 23 that Republican presidential candidate John McCain has former lobbyists from the telecommunications industry raising money for him. “Of the 66 current or former lobbyists working for the Arizona senator or raising money for his presidential campaign, 23 have lobbied for telecommunications companies in the past decade, Senate lobbying disclosures show.”
The article goes on to say:
“McCain has netted about $765,000 in political donations from those telecom lobbyists, their spouses, colleagues at their firms and their telecom clients during the past decade, a USA TODAY analysis of campaign-finance records shows.
McCain is a senior member of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the telecom industry and the Federal Communications Commission. He has repeatedly pushed industry-backed legislation since 2000, particularly during a second stint as committee chairman from 2003 through 2005. His efforts to eliminate taxes and regulations on telecommunications services won him praise from industry executives.
People who lobbied for telecom companies on those issues include McCain’s campaign manager, his deputy manager, his finance chief, his top unpaid political adviser and his Senate chief of staff. Telecom companies have paid the lobbying firms that employed those top five McCain advisers more than $4.4 million since 1999, lobbying records show.”
McCain was one of 68 senators who voted to give the major phone companies immunity for their role in allowing the US government to engage in its warrantless wiretapping program. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were both absent from this vote, but it is clear from the data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics that “those who favor immunity have received more money from telecom than those who don’t.” The data also shows that big telecom companies like Verizon and AT&T have contributed almost equally to both the Democratic and Republican Parties.
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