(snip)
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.
Doesn’t a million for Web services seem a bit high for 6 months?
BTTT