Mojo Blog : Two NRA Lobbyists Violating the McCain Campaign's Conflict Rules?

[maddezmom]

Have two lobbyists who work for John McCain's campaign—one as national finance cochairman, the other as cochairman of the campaign's Sportsmen for McCain committee—violated the campaign's conflict of interest policy?

In May, when the campaign was being hit by one news story after another about lobbyists working on its staff, campaign manager Rick Davis (who is now on leave from his own influential lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, and under fire for his past connections to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) issued conflict rules that banned any active lobbyist or foreign agent from being a paid employee of the campaign. Lobbyists and foreign agents, though, could work for the campaign as part-time volunteers, as long as they did not participate in policy-making regarding the matters on which they lobby. Another provision declared that "no person with a McCain Campaign title or position may participate in a 527 or other independent entity that makes public communications that support or oppose any presidential candidate."

That rule that may cause trouble for the campaign and two of its prominent supporters, Wayne Berman and James Jay Baker, who are lobbyists for the National Rifle Association, for the NRA recently began airing harsh attack-ads against Barack Obama.
Berman and Baker work at the powerhouse lobbying shop Ogilvy Government Relations, where both are managing directors. According to the most recent Senate lobbying reports, the pair are registered lobbyists for the gun rights group. (Another Ogilvy lobbyist working for the NRA, Moses Mercado, has advised the Barack Obama campaign on a volunteer basis.) Berman—whose bio on the firm's website describes him "as one of Washington's quietly influential insiders on both domestic and foreign policy"—co-chairs McCain's national finance committee. Baker, a former NRA official, co-steers (with Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating) the campaign's National Steering Committee of Sportsmen for McCain.


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http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9903_nra_lobbyists_mccain_conflict.html

[FSogol]

1. It would probably be quicker to tell us which McBush campaign workers

were *not* lobbyists violating the faux campaign conflict of interest rules.