9-14-08, 4:08 pm
John McCain says he wants to reform Washington, but does hiring well-known Republican Washington lobbyist, William Timmons, who has shady ties to the South African apartheid regime, really spell change?
Timmons is the latest lobbyist added to the McCain campaign. Other investigations of McCain's team show that Timmons will be joining at least 29 others who lobbied on behalf of Big Oil alone.
The hiring of Timmons prompted a sharp response from the Obama campaign.
'We know John McCain’s campaign is run by Washington lobbyists, and we just learned that he has hired one of Washington’s most famous and powerful lobbyists to staff his White House. It's not a team of mavericks who'll be running Washington if John McCain wins – it's a team of lobbyists,' Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor wrote in a campaign memo this weekend.
Timmons, who has worked for every Republican president since the 1960s, has ties to the oil industry, the insurance industry, and to now-failed Freddie Mac. Timmons has also been a registered 'foreign agent' for corporations based in Japan and South Korea. From companies based in other countries to Big Oil and Wall Street, Timmons is a corporate insider, but his appointment in the McCain campaign, only highlights McCain's distance from Main Street, the Obama campaign suggested.
Most controversially, perhaps, is the fact that Timmons, according to federal government documents, was a registered foreign agent in the 1980s for Bophuthatswana, a 'homeland' created by the South African apartheid regime to increase segregation and to prop itself up. The United Nations Committee Against Apartheid specifically denounced foreign businesses tied to Bophuthatswana, such as Timmons', as 'profiting from apartheid.'
'Over the course of the past eight years of the Bush administration,' said Obama spokesperson Bill Burton, 'lobbyists and special interests haven't just gotten a seat at the table, they've been able to buy every one.' The way McCain has turned control of his campaign over to lobbyists shows that he isn't going to change that.
Obama raises record contributions
In other campaign news, the Obama campaign raised a record $66 million in August. According to the campaign, 500,000 new people donated to the campaign last month, bringing the total number of people who have financially supported Barack Obama for president to over 2.5 million.
Campaign spokesperson Bill Burton said the new dollar and participant figures are 'an astonishing measure of how much the American people hunger for change.' He added that John McCain, in adopting the Obama campaign slogan, may know a good thing when he sees it, but he isn't fooling anyone.
In a related story, McCain's mudslinging and misleading campaign is turning off some Republicans. It even got Karl Rove and the New York Times to finally agree on something. Rove told McCain media headquarters, FOX News, last week, that the McCain campaign has gone 'one step too far,' by saying things that are 'beyond the 100 percent truth test.' In other words, McCain has lied, Rove implied.
The New York Times last week quoted another Republican strategist as saying, 'Any campaign that is taking liberty with the truth and does it in a serial manner will end up paying for it in the end. But it’s very unbecoming to a political figure like John McCain whose flag was planted long ago in ground that was about 'straight talk' and integrity.”
Responding to reporters questions on a conference call Sunday Sept. 14, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz rejected McCain's misleading, mudslinging style of politics.
'The truth matters,' she said. 'I am a mom with three young kids. I raise my kids to believe the truth matters. John McCain and Sarah Palin apparently think that winning at all cost is what matters and to heck with the truth. And that doesn't teach our children very good values.'
Wasserman Schultz promised the Obama campaign would hit back when needed, but on the issues that Americans care about.
Lobbyists and the mantle of change
On John McCain's claim to be a 'change agent,' Wasserman Schultz responded, 'I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.'
Wasserman Schultz pointed out that by voting with George W. Bush more than 90 percent of the time and by adding Washington lobbyists to head his campaign, John McCain isn't fooling anyone with his claim to be the change candidate.
'We have a campaign here, the McCain campaign, that is of, for, and by the lobbyists,' she added. 'It's clear that if, God forbid, there is a McCain administration, the White House would be run by lobbyists also.'
'That is the last thing we need in this country,' she said. Wall Street and Big Oil lobbyists do not represent the interests of working families facing tough economic times and a health care system in crisis.
Hinting perhaps also at the Jack Abramoff scandal, Wasserman Schultz added that Republicans and their lobbyists have blocked every reform the Democratic Congress has tried to bring to Washington.
It is impossible for McCain with his record and his ties to lobbyists to say that he would bring any change, she said. 'The American people will see through that. It's very transparent.'
Wasserman Schultz pointed out that Obama's campaign isn't controlled by Washington lobbyists and that Barack Obama doesn't agree with John McCain who believes lobbyists should have 'special access' to the White House. 'We need to level the playing field in Washington,' she said, if we are going to accomplish any of the changes the American people want.
'John McCain, because he is bought and paid for by Washington lobbyists and because his administration would be run by lobbyists, he is focused on continuing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest one or two percent of this country. And Americans are really tired of that,' she emphasized.
