Troublesome Résumés
By Edward T. Pound
Posted 5/20/07It isn't just the candidate whose reputation has been challenged in some quarters. Ethical questions have arisen about three of Sen. John McCain's most senior campaign aides—John Weaver, Richard Davis, and Terry Nelson. Weaver and Davis, often at odds over strategy, worked for McCain's presidential effort in 2000; Nelson was brought aboard for the current campaign.
Weaver, a seasoned political operative, ran into an ethical storm while employed by the 1996 presidential campaign of then Sen. Phil Gramm...
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The questions surrounding Davis concern his part ownership of a company, 3eDC, and its ties to the McCain campaign. Like Weaver and Nelson, Davis, the campaign CEO, is paid $20,000 a month. Additionally, however, Davis's 3eDC has a lucrative contract with the campaign. U.S. News could find no public record showing Davis's ownership interest in 3EDC, but in an interview he acknowledged that he was one of its two owners. McCain's spokesman, Brian Jones, confirmed that Davis "did not disclose his interest in 3eDC to Senator McCain.'"
3eDC helped build the campaign's website and maintains its infrastructure. Davis declined to disclose the company's contractual arrangement with McCain's operation, but campaign records filed recently show that the company is owed $175,000 for just three months' work. Davis identified the other 3edc owner as Paul Manafort, his partner in a lobbying firm, Davis Manafort. Manafort is a controversial figure in Washington. He has represented notorious dictators and once described himself as an "influence peddler" in testimony before a House committee examining how he and other Republican operatives profited from a housing program for the poor.
Questions about Terry Nelson, the campaign manager, have emerged previously. Nelson figured in the Texas campaign scandal that led to the indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The indictment alleges that Nelson, as an official at the Republican National Committee, acted as a conduit when $190,000 in corporate funds was laundered through the RNC to Republican candidates in Texas five years ago. ...
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When Mr. McCain's first campaign manager, Terry Nelson, left this summer, he was followed out by John Weaver, the longtime chief strategist who had originally helped persuade the senator to run for president. Out of loyalty to those two men, other top aides resigned.
Taking over, Mr. Davis was painted by his rivals as an opportunist who had managed to wrest control of the organization in part by winning influence with Mr. McCain's wife, Cindy.
Some of those rivals also accused him of self-dealing, since 3eDC, a company he partly owns, had been retained by the campaign to provide Web services. Aides questioned whether Mr. Davis's role in the company had been fully disclosed and said Mr. Weaver, having learned of the arrangement, had tried to end it.
All told, 3eDC billed the campaign more than $1 million for Web services during the first half of the year. (The amount still owed the company accounts for about a third of the campaign's debt.) News reports also noted that Davis Manafort, the business development and consulting practice from which Mr. Davis is on leave, had been giving campaign advice to the Ukrainian prime minister, Viktor F. Yanukovich, a favorite of the Kremlin, whose power Mr. McCain often warns against.
Mr. Davis said in the interview that the 3eDC contract had been thoroughly vetted, with his role fully disclosed, and called any accusation that he had been trying to enrich himself ''typical smear stuff.'' He said he did not fight back against the accusation when it surfaced over the summer because he did not want the back-and-forth to distract from the campaign.
Lotsa worms here. With McCain as the biggest one.
Bumping a great post.
So, is Nelson the guy who turned on Delay and helped the Democrats build a case to entrap him? The upshot of the whole thing was that what Delay did was not illegal at the time that he did it, and I think that the charges were eventually dropped. I’m not sure.