A couple of weeks ago, the McCain campaign had to get rid of two top officials — including the man McCain tapped to manage the Republican National Convention, because they were both lobbyists tied to Burma’s brutal military junta. We learned at the time that McCain passed over a different lobbyist for the convention post because he’d served as a consultant for “Viktor Yanukovich, the former Ukrainian prime minister who has been widely criticized for alleged corruption and for his close ties to Russia’s Vladimir Putin — a potential embarrassment for McCain, who in 2007 called Putin a ‘totalitarian dictator.'”
One McCain strategist said, “The Ukrainian stuff was viewed as too much.”
With this in mind, McCain probably should have Googled his campaign manager, too.
The issue of foreign lobbying has flared up in the current presidential campaign because of past dealings abroad by several former lobbyists working for Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
For instance, a lobbying firm owned by Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, has worked in recent years for a Ukraine politician, Viktor Yanukovich. Both Mr. McCain and the Bush administration supported the opponent of Mr. Yanukovich, who had close ties to Vladimir V. Putin, then the president of Russia and now prime minister.
During this time, however, Mr. Davis’s firm, Davis Manafort, never registered as a lobbyist for Mr. Yanukovich even though Paul Manafort, Mr. Davis’s business partner, had met with the United States ambassador in Kiev on Mr. Yanukovich’s behalf.
In a related development, Mr. McCain may have first become aware of Davis Manafort’s activities in Ukraine as far back as 2005. At that time, a staff member at the National Security Council called Mr. McCain’s Senate office to complain that Mr. Davis’s lobbying firm was undercutting American foreign policy in Ukraine, said a person with direct knowledge of the phone call who spoke on condition of anonymity.
And here McCain probably thought his lobbyist-driven headaches were behind him.
Now, for what it’s worth, the McCain campaign concedes that Rick Davis’ firm took on Yanukovich as a client, but insisted that Davis didn’t work specifically on Yanukovich’s account. For that matter, the McCain campaign denies that the senator learned of Davis’ Ukrainian lobbying a few years ago.
McCain’s campaign categorically denied that Davis was involved in his firm’s work for the Ukranian politician — did not prepare briefings for U.S. officials or lawmakers, did not schedule meetings involving Yanukovich, did not draft talking points, and did not make phone calls on Yanukovich’s behalf.
“He was not involved in any work his firm did on Ukraine, including Yanukovich,” said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers.
If the account of the NSC staffer’s call is true, it suggests McCain should have known about the work by Davis’ business — but installed him as campaign manager anyway.
There is, of course, the side issue of why Davis’ firm failed to register its work for Yanukovich with the U.S. government, possibly in violation of anti-espionage Foreign Agents Registration Act.
That’s the unfortunate thing about hiring a bunch of lobbyists to run an entire campaign operation — some of those lobbyists’ clients can come back to haunt the candidate.