List of McCain Fund-Raisers Includes Prominent Telecom Lobbyists

Senator John McCain has staked his campaign for the presidency in large part on his reputation as a reformer intent on curbing the influence of money in politics. But an examination by The New York Times of a list of 106 elite fund-raisers who have brought in more than $100,000 each for Sen McCain found that about a sixth of them were lobbyists. The list of "bundlers" was released on Friday by the McCain campaign. The sizable number of lobbyists, who are outnumbered on the list only by those working in the financial services industry, offers another example of the balancing act that Sen McCain, the Republican nominee, is having to strike as he campaigns for the presidency and seeks to maintain his reputation as a reformer. Several of McCain's top fund-raisers, for example, lobby for the telecommunications industry, which regularly does business before the Senate Commerce Committee, where Sen McCain is a senior member and once served as chairman. Kirk Blalock, of the lobbying firm Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, leads McCain's young professional group and has raised over $250,000 for him; his clients include Sprint Nextel and Viacom. Kyle McSlarrow, chief of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the lobbying arm for the cable industry, has raised over $100,000 for McCain. He and others in the cable industry recently butted heads with Sen McCain over a proposal that would allow customers to pick and choose which channels they received. In an interview Sunday, Wayne Berman, who is deputy finance chairman of the McCain campaign and a veteran lobbyist whose clients include Verizon and Verizon Wireless, dismissed the notion that some lobbyists might be raising money for Sen McCain to curry influence. "When it comes to McCain," Mr. Berman said, "there's just absolutely no concern whatsoever that he is going to be influenced by lobbyists. He takes on issues as he sees them. It doesn't matter whether his best friends are on the other side or not."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/us/politics/21bundlers.html?ref=todays...
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