So it appears that Mark Salter was not totally a victim of the Great McCain Massacre, though his salary was: Swampland reports that Salter will continue with the campaign as a speechwriter and senior advisor, though on a pro bono basis. Ana Marie Cox also helps put things in perspective:

To analogize to the current POTUS: McCain losing Terry Nelson is like Bush losing Josh Bolten. McCain losing Weaver is like Bush losing Rove. McCain losing Salter would be like Bush losing Jeb.

Meanwhile Marc Ambinder has all the juicy details. It seems McCain was pressured by “friends and advisers outside the campaign” to fire Nelson after the disastrous Q2 numbers were released. For a few days, McCain resisted. What happens next is of particular note:

In the intervening period, McCain suggested that Rick Davis, who was McCain’s manager in 2000, officially move to a position of co-equal power with Nelson. That crossed a “line in the sand” for chief strategist John Weaver, who has sparred with Davis over campaign strategy and tactics.

Some Republicans close to the campaign say that Davis pushed McCain to fire Nelson.
McCain’s refusal to give Nelson absolute authority over the campaign “cost McCain both Weaver and Salter,” one source close to the campaign said.

So now that very same Rick Davis will be taking over as campaign manager. Who is he? Fittingly for the most lobbyist-infested campaign in the race (on either side), Davis is yet another lobbyist. Davis founded Davis, Manafort & Freedman, Inc., through which he served clients ranging from Nigerian dictator Gen. Sani Abacha to “mafia-like” Argentine legislator Alberto Pierri. Davis has had a long association with McCain — one tangled up in webs of special influence. In 1999, while Davis was working for McCain, two of his firm’s clients, COMSAT and SBC, “had major (and controversial) mergers pending before the Federal Communications Commission in 1999, and both mergers were approved.” The FCC was under the legislative oversight authority of McCain’s Commerce Committee, yet McCain refused to recuse himself from the proceedings.

Davis was also a central figure in McCain’s Reform Institute scandal, an under-reported affair in which the “Maverick” Senator used a nonprofit, tax-exempt “reform” organization to trade political favors for corporate cash.

So John McCain and Rick Davis are back together again. McCain, it seems, will never really be able to put public service ahead of his lobbyist friends’ interests.

Posted by Paul Curtis
Tuesday, July 10, 2007 at 5:02 pm

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