The biggest news of the day (at least that wasn’t from the debate) is something we wrote about last night – AT&T and Verizon setting up cell phone towers on John McCain’s ranch in what appears to be an example of McCain and his wife, Cindy, getting preferential treatment. McCain, of course, has been a friend to the companies on Capitol Hill and has many of their lobbyists serving his campaign.

Here’s the original Washington Post story. Also weighing in today is The New York Times.

Yesterday we mentioned Murray Waas’ story in Huffington Post about William Timmons’ connections to Saddam Hussein. As expected, McCain’s campaign is downplaying the story but now they’re also claiming they’ve “had no associations with any lobbyists – a claim MSNBC’s David Schuster isn’t buying, in this clip.

McCain’s VP pick, Sarah Palin, got a frosty reception yesterday when she trashed Wall Street… in front of a group of wealthy New Yorkers, even earning hisses and boos at some points of her speech. Fox News embed Mosheh Oinounou has the story.

The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Jacoby reports that McCain raised $87 million for the Republican National Committee in August and September. Unfortunately for McCain, it appears the RNC isn’t returning the favor, having pulled out of Wisconsin and Maine, the AP’s Jim Kuhnhenn notes.

Finally, USA Today’s Ken Dilanian and Matt Kelley look at the problems both candidates face in railing against corruption while relying on some questionable people for fundraising. It’s part of their ongoing “Price of Power” series examining the role of money in politics and is definitely worth a read.

Tags: AT&T, fundraising, McCain, Obama, Palin, Republican National Committee, Verizon, Wall Street, William Timmons

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 12:33 pm and is filed under In the news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.