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NY Times: McCain had possible relations to Female Lobbyist

NY Times
February 21, 2008

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, in his offices and aboard a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s clients, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended McCain’s political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.

But the concerns about McCain’s relationship with Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.

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McCain: I did not have sexual relations with that woman

Nick Juliano
Raw Story
February 21, 2008

‘Disappointed’ in NY Times piece; ‘It’s not true’

Republican presidential candidate John McCain faced the explosion of a long-ticking timebomb Thursday morning when the New York Times revealed allegations of his questionable conduct with a woman who lobbied for the telecommunications industry.

In a 9 a.m. press conference, McCain denied the Times report, saying he was disappointed with the paper of record’s handling of the story.

“I’m very disappointed in The New York Times piece,” McCain said. “It’s not true.”

The Arizona Senator flatly denied that he had a romantic relationship with the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, and he said campaign aides never warned him about speculation the two were having an affair nor intervened to keep her from campaign events.

While he said he was unaware whether aides discussed the alleged relationship amongst themselves, McCain said he never heard the concerns personally. He went on to pan the Times‘ sourcing of the article.

“I do notice with some interest that it’s, quote, ‘former aides,’ that this whole story is based on anonymous sources. … I’m very disappointed in that,” McCain said.

One former top campaign aide, John Weaver, did speak on the record to the Times and the Washington Post, which produced its own story on McCain and Iseman Thursday.

Weaver told the papers he met Iseman in person at Union Station in Washington, DC, to warn her to stay away from McCain. In his press conference Thursday, McCain said he had not spoken about the Times investigation with Weaver before it was published and he denied knowing about the Union Station meeting.

Right off the bat, McCain was asked about the most salacious implications of the Times article.

Q Senator, did you ever have any meeting with any of your staffers in which they would have intervened to ask you not to see Vicki Iseman or to be concerned about appearances of being too close to a lobbyist? SEN. MCCAIN: No. Q No meeting ever occurred? SEN. MCCAIN: No. Q No staffer was ever concerned about a possible romantic relationship? SEN. MCCAIN: If they were, they didn’t communicate that to me. Q Did you ever have such a relationship? SEN. MCCAIN: No.

McCain also acknowledged speaking to Times editor Bill Keller while the paper was reporting its story, but he said he never tried to dissuade him from publishing it.

“I called him up when the investigation was going on and I asked him basically what was happening and that we hoped that we could bring this to closure,” McCain said. “But it was a very brief conversation.”

At one point, Cindy McCain took to the microphone to share her own criticism of the paper.

“My children and I not only trust my husband but know that he would never do anything to not only disappoint our family, but [to] disappoint the people of America,” she said. “He’s a man of great character, and I’m very, very disappointed in The New York Times.”

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2ueSREqe3qc