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McCain returns suspicious campaign contributions

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This was definitely the right move, considering the story’s potential for uncomfortable questions.

Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign will return all of the contributions solicited by the Jordanian business partner of one of Mr. McCain’s most prolific fund-raisers.

The decision caps a frenetic two days in which both the Washington Post and The New York Times published articles scrutinizing a cluster of more than $50,000 in unusual contributions from a single extended family, the Abdullahs, in California and several of their friends.

Several of the contributors, who seemed to be unusual major donors to a political campaign, expressed in interviews indifference or even hostility to Mr. McCain’s candidacy.

The donations were credited to Harry Sargeant III, who is the finance chairman for the Florida Republican Party and part-owner of a major oil trading firm. But the contributions were actually solicited by Mustafa Abu Naba’a, a longtime business partner of Mr. Sargeant’s.

McCain campaign spokesperson Brian Rogers told reporters, “We are taking the precautionary effort of returning any and all contributions that were solicited by Mr. Abu Naba’a. We had an issue with the idea there were people giving to the campaign who had no intention of voting for or supporting John McCain.”

Rogers added that the McCain campaign believes it can accept bundled donations collected by a foreign national like Abu Naba’a, but in this case, the contributions “just didn’t sound right” to the campaign.

Marc Ambinder comes through with the Question of the Day: “If there were a group of questionable donations all with the name Abdullah that were funneled through a guy in Jordan who is a Jordanian national who is under investigation for war profiteering, and it were Barack Obama instead of John McCain, would this be a bigger deal?”

Of course, it would. And to borrow an Atrios line, “This has been another edition of easy answers to easy questions.”

I was thinking of all the reasons for the double standard here, but before I could write it up, Greg Sargent beat me to it.

It’s unfortunate, but judgments by editors and campaign journalists about the newsworthiness of such stuff, and opinions from pundits as to how controversial they should be, are largely driven by preconceived notions — sometimes arbitrary ones — about the candidates’ vulnerabilities.

Obama, for obvious (and some not so obvious) reasons, has been judged to be vulnerable to the charge that he’s a terrorist sympathizer. John McCain is not seen as vulnerable to this charge. Thus, if Obama had received a bunch of shadowy contributions from a guy named Abdullah, it would have made it easier for the GOP to exacerbate a vulnerability that has already been presumed to exist. This alone would make folks treat it like a bigger story. […]

The irony, of course, is that this is a self-perpetuating dynamic. Because a candidate has been deemed in advance to be vulnerable to a particular accusation, stories that play to that accusation get more attention, which in turn makes that candidate still more vulnerable to it. These things should not be driving decisions about what is and isn’t news. But this is how it works. Sorry.

It’s frustrating beyond words, but that sums it up quite nicely.

Comments

  • Danp

    says:

    50K is a small price to pay, and the RNC will repay him from other funds Sergeant and Abdullah collected for the party from precisely the same people McCain is refunding.

  • slappy magoo

    says:

    How long before the GOP gets it in their collective head (I’ve no idea who’s using the brain they share this week) to get Abdullah or some other mysterious character of MidEast descent to bundle a lot of money into Obama’s campaign so they can then point their fingers and go “Wh-wha-wha-wh-WHAT? Buh-buh-buh-but LOOK! Obama’s doing it too! And it’s a bigger deal because he’s weak on terror!”

  • Steve

    says:

    It should be more than obvious that the McCain camp knew everything there was to know about these “questionable” contributions; they’ve even presented the belief that they are completely legal, and are likely returning the money because they were “found out” by the folks in the media who are still cognitively and ethically capable of doing their jobs.

    So, they’re returning $50k—because we know about the $50k. But what about the probable funds we haven’t found out about yet? But I’m confident that we can trust Camp McCain to do the right thing.

    Ri-iiiight…..

  • Lance

    says:

    I’m amazed they are returning rather than passing it on to charity. Wow! They must actually like their donors.

  • Racer X

    says:

    …The donations were credited to Harry Sargeant III, who is the finance chairman for the Florida Republican Party…

    who we will not see thrown under the bus, unlike his friends with arab sounding names. Because he’s a war hero who would never do anything hinky like give straw donors money to funnel to his war hero buddy McCain.

    Have we seen enough people with military experience run afoul of the law yet to dump the automatic association between military service and living an ethical life?

    McCain dumped his disabled wife for a millionaire heiress half his age, who he now calls a “cunt” in front of reporters. That should disqualify him from being percieved as an ethical person. But he’s a war hero, and the guy who’s only been married once has to prove he’s fit to be president, not John McCain.

  • MsMuddled

    says:

    More on war profiteering: From the Houston Chronicle:

    “Sargeant said in an interview Thursday that he at times left the task of collecting the checks to a longtime business partner, Mustafa Abu Naba’a, who is not an American citizen. According to court records, Abu Naba’a is a dual citizen of Jordan and the Dominican Republic.”

    “Money raised by Abu Naba’a is being returned. Sargeant raised at least an additional $460,000 for McCain. Some of that money was gathered by a former high ranking CIA anti-terrorism expert who is now Sargeant’s business partner.”

    “Abu Naba’a holds a one-third share in Sargeant’s company, which supplies oil to the U.S. military in Iraq. He and Sargeant are both defendants in a lawsuit by a third partner, Mohammad Anwar Farid al-Saleh, that alleges he was defrauded out of his share of the proceeds from the business.”

  • Mudge

    says:

    The money is tainted; it was given in the name of people who did not have money like that to donate. No self respecting charity should touch it.

    And an interesting comment at Kos was whether the donors get their money “back”.

    Now let’s see if the media actually tracks where this money goes. That would be interesting.

  • Aaron

    says:

    An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics found Barack Obama has received more money from Exxon’s employees, including top executives, than John McCain. And the company isn’t the only energy behemoth to favor the presumptive Democratic nominee: Chevron and BP executives and workers have also sent more money to the Illinois senator than to his fall rival.

    Through June, Exxon employees have given Obama $42,100 to McCain’s $35,166,” said CRP in a new report. “Chevron favors Obama $35,157 to $28,500, and Obama edges out McCain with BP $16,046 vs. $11,500.

  • Chad

    says:

    I would invite Obama to do the same. I’m sure he’s accepting money from some pretty unfavorable characters too. It’s just going to be a matter of time until the role reverses and then you’ll all be saying, “What’s the big deal, it’s politics, they can’t screen every contribution that comes in.”

    Get off your high horse.

  • JoeW

    says:

    I suspect McSame would have kept the money if he could have come up with answers about it that wouldn’t have made the “Dazed and Confused” reel.

  • Dee Loralei

    says:

    Dale @#3, that is totally brilliant and I am sooooooo stealing it. “John McCain embraces campaign reform, one scandal at a time.” I want that on a bumpersticker.

  • MsMuddled

    says:

    No one’s on a high horse here Chad. It’s just the facts, bro. I’m fairly certain that Obama’s finances are being scrutinized by your sleeze-balls pals as if they were already criminal . If there were indiscretions, they would have “telegraphed” it from the highest rooftop, and you know it.

    Nice try though.

  • Chad

    says:

    Yeah MsMuddled, they have made a few accusations telegraphed from the highest rooftop, but if the MSM doesn’t pick it up, who’s going to hear it? They’re so far up Obama’s ass, it’s pathetic.

  • SadOldVet

    says:

    Chad – we need a better quality of troll on this site than you.

    If you can’t come up with something other than “he probably did it too, so it’s ok for McBush”, you need to go back to 5th grade and take some creative writing classes.

  • Chad

    says:

    I didn’t say it was ok to do, I basically said Obama isn’t a saint either and it’s only a matter of time until some of his contributions are questioned, which they already are, but really, are we really going to disqualify either candidate because someone contributed to their campaign? Is that the straw? Both Obama and McCain have bigger fish to fry than worrying about donations.

  • Lance

    says:

    Chad and Aaron are being paid by the post, not by the quality.

    Which explains a lot about why conservatives are not fit to run a Dunkin Donuts, much less the country.

  • JoeW

    says:

    Chad brings to mind that old Dan Quaylism: “A mind is a terrible to lose, or not to have at all.” Then again, maybe those shiny McTrinkets are pretty nifty.

  • Dale

    says:

    Aaron said:
    Through June, Exxon employees have given Obama $42,100 to McCain’s $35,166,”

    I suspect employees in every industry have given more to Obama than McCain because Obama’s main support comes from small donors. McCain’s donationa from the oil industry are triple those to Obama.

  • st john

    says:

    Aaron @11: That is such old news. The numbers are irrelevant. We are talking less than $50K per “employee” and as little as $11,500, and the difference is statistically insignificant, IMO. VS. $1.3 million for Mc to a few hundred thousand for Obama from oil corporations. And, check out the Hess stories for suspicious donations from employees, all on the same day!
    Did you get your $25 tire(d) guage?

    peace,
    st john

  • Tom Cleaver

    says:

    So when are they going to return the Hess Company “donations”? You know, the ones by a Hess office manager and her Amtrak foreman husband, who live in a rented house in Queens and donated $60,000 to McCain???????

  • Brandon

    says:

    CB, you really need to get over the fact that the media treats McCain and Obama differently or that McCain can get away with things he would blast Obama for doing the same (in regards to the QotD). It is not going to change, no matter how badly you want it to do so.