Pulitzer Winner Joan Vennochi (Boston Globe) on McCain's Spoiled Message: State Street Bank

[CorpGovActivist]

WILL THE MONEY SPOIL HIS MESSAGE?
February 4, 2000, p. A23

How hard is it to flush out campaign contributions when you bash the system that allows them to flourish? It's not as hard as you might think - as long as people see you as a winner.

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In Boston, for example, the group includes Marshall Carter, chairman and chief executive officer for State Street Bank, who is also on McCain's national finance committee. He co-hosted two fund- raisers for McCain - one last month with Hale and Dorr lawyer Ernest Klein and one in September with Fidelity executive David Weinstein - that raised $100,000.

This week, Carter mailed out 627 fund-raising letters around the country on McCain's behalf. The missive, seeking contributions of $1,000, praises the candidate as a patriot and hero, a "solid pro- business Republican," and "a president who can make us proud." The letter mentions McCain's support for campaign finance reform but doesn't dwell on it.

Like McCain, Carter hails from a military family, and the two served in Vietnam. Their shared background is an obvious connection, but Carter says his reasons for supporting McCain go beyond that. The most important: McCain's character and leadership capabilities.

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Can he continue to talk about it and still raise money? And if he does, can he keep the reformer message that made him a winner in New Hampshire? Carter believes he can. He says he agrees with McCain's goal "of limiting all candidates to limits which force them to appeal to broader constituencies." As a McCain supporter, he says he wants only one thing: "I am looking for this country to be led by people we can be proud of."

But the forces opposing McCain will push hard to paint him as an equivocator, a hypocrite, and worse. An article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal detailed the senator's extensive record of deciding how the federal government should or shouldn't regulate business and whose interests he represented in each decision.

More is sure to come, including a repackaging of the so-called Keating Five scandal and any and all access McCain has provided to financial services, telecommunications interests, and anyone else who has come before the Senate Commerce Committee, which he chairs.

So far McCain's reply has been an acknowledgement that to some degree he too is tarnished by the system he wants to change. But at some point, he will have to tell us plainly where and when he drew the line between money, access, and influence. ...

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I attended the fundraiser that State Street held for McCain in 2000, right before the NH primary, to help get the word out on why State Street's support was being offered: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22state+street%22+social+security+privatization">Social Security privatization. The press contacts I added to the Golden Rolodex that day have proven - time and again - to be true journalists.

I have a deep oppo research file on McCain.

Unfortunately, much of it implicates one of the remaining candidates in the Democratic field, too.

- Dave

[CorpGovActivist]

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