The Reformer Tunes His Money Machine
Charlie Ergen was grateful, and he knew how to show it. Last March, the satellite-television billionaire was in a nasty turf battle with the TV networks. Ergen, founder of EchoStar Communications, lobbied for a Senate bill that would let companies like his continue intercepting network signals--a practice the networks say is piracy. He found an ally in Sen. John McCain. The chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee championed the bill, and it cleared the panel undamaged. A week later, the Colorado tycoon threw a fund-raiser for McCain's presidential campaign at his Denver home. Estimated take: $47,000.
Hardly an unusual tale in money-driven Washington. But for McCain, it seemed an odd disconnect. No politician has more fiercely denounced the corrupting influence of big money on politics. For years he has fought an uphill battle to curb the millions in "soft money" that flows from corporations and unions into the political parties, and he routinely rails against the unfair advantage of special interests. His crusade irritates fellow Senate Republicans, who last week rejected another campaign-reform bill. With Elizabeth Dole's withdrawal from the presidential race, McCain is gaining strength--and hopes to ride money reforms into the White House. "It's the basis of my campaign," he told NEWSWEEK. Yet some Senate colleagues--and more than a few lobbyists--gripe that there is a not-too-subtle inconsistency between McCain's reform crusade and his own fund-raising.
McCain told NEWSWEEK there is nothing improper about his methods--though he is quick to admit that he has what he calls "an appearance problem." In the last election, he amassed $562,000 in contributions from the communications industry--more than anyone in the Senate. He also took in $341,000 from airlines, railroads and other transportation companies regulated by the Commerce panel. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, eight of the top 10 contributors to his presidential campaign were executives at companies with extensive interests before the Commerce committee--including US West ($48,225), Viacom ($47,750) and BellSouth ($30,763). "He acts like he's entitled to it," says a lobbyist whose firm has contributed. "He sees no connection between twisting our arms for money and then talking about how corrupt the system is."
McCain has been aided by execs with more than a passing interest in the senator's well-being. One top fund-raiser is Sol Trujillo, chairman of US West--which stands to benefit from a McCain-sponsored bill to permit the Baby Bells to offer high-speed Internet access. Another is David Pottruck, president of Charles Schwab. The brokerage house could profit from McCain's bill requiring stock exchanges to make free instant quotes available online.
No one is charging that McCain's fund-raising has broken any laws--or that he has altered his positions in order to win campaign cash. McCain himself concedes his intermingling of lawmaking and fund-raising is problematic. "I have been guilty of the appearance of corruption," he says. But, he insists, he has no choice. If he didn't collect cash from companies with business before his committee, he says, he couldn't compete with his better-funded rivals. At least, he argues, he's trying to minimize the corrupting influence of money. His ally in that fight, Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold, calls McCain "the least corrupt guy in Washington"--though he says "the system taints all of us." Sometimes even its toughest critic.
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Michael Isikoff has been an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek since 2004. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential politics and other national issues. His book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September, 2006. The book was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball w/ Chris Matthews.
Ever since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. His blog "DeClassified: Investigative Reporting in Real Time," which appears regularly on Newsweek's Web site and is written with MarkHosenball, has become a must-read for senior U.S. intelligence officials. Isikoff and Hosenball won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online.
Isikoff's June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, Isikoff obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." The book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976.
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