John McCain’s ties to gambling interests have been getting a bit more attention these days – look at these recent reports by The Associated Press and CBS News. Now, that relationship is the subject of a new ad by Campaign Money Watch – more details about the ad will be posted here later today, but feel free to watch it right now.

In other news, the Associated Press’ Justin Pritchard and Garance Burke reported this weekend that McCain’s VP pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, presided over a “flawed bidding process” for a massive pipeline project that “narrowed the field to a company with ties to her administration.” The story notes that “leader of Palin’s pipeline team had been a partner at a lobbying firm where she worked on behalf of a TransCanada subsidiary. Also, that woman’s former business partner at the lobbying firm was TransCanada’s lead private lobbyist on the pipeline deal.”

Also in the news today are reports of two GOP fundraisers who once played a crucial role but have seen their influence minimized. The first is President Bush – The Washington Post notes that the unpopular incumbent has been relegated to relatively small events for congressional fundraising committees and hasn’t attended many events for specific candidates, most notably McCain.

The other Republican fundraiser down on his luck these days is McCain bundler Harold C. Simmons, who was behind 2004’s infamous Swift Boat ads. His efforts this year to tie Barack Obama to William Ayers haven’t had much impact, The New York Times notes, largely because Democrats were simply better prepared, but also because independent groups have seen their influence decline this election.

The presidential candidates have now released their pre-election campaign finance reports, the last official, comprehensive look we’ll get at their spending and fundraising before Election Day. As the AP’s Jim Kuhnhenn reports, John McCain has been spending about $1.5 million a day and “likely has only $12 million to spend in the next 11 days before the Nov. 4 election.”

As for Obama, his fundraising appears to have slowed off the breakneck pace that allowed him to raise $150 million in September. In the first two weeks of the month, Obama raised $36 million. Still, when combined with money raised by the Democratic National Committee, Obama had $97 million on hand to spend, compared to $84 million for McCain and the Republican National Committee. (While the AP portrayed this as bad news for Obama, the Los Angeles Times’ Dan Morain saw it as further evidence of Obama’s dominance.)

Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor’s Linda Feldmann joins the chorus of reporters writing about the future of campaign finance in the wake of Obama’s blockbuster September. And the Baltimore Sun joins the chorus of newspaper editorial boards calling for the next president and Congress to fix a broken system.

Finally, CQ Politics’ Bart Jansen notes that watchdog groups, in the wake of Obama’s record-breaking haul, are “drafting ways to attempt in the next Congress to curb big-dollar presidential campaign bundlers without discouraging the wave of small-dollar contributions flowing in through the Internet.”

On the heels of reports that Barack Obama had raised $150 million in September, we learned that John McCain had $47 million on hand for October campaigning. But McCain is still, legally, tapping money from other sources.

As The Wall Street Journal’s T.W. Farnam reports, McCain has been using money from his compliance fund – typically used to cover the costs of, well, complying with federal election law – to cover up to 5 percent of his advertising expenses. And it’s a specific 5 percent: The portion of every ad that declares, “I’m John McCain and I approve this message.” McCain is using his compliance fund to an unprecedented degree, spending more in one month than either President Bush or John Kerry spent in all of 2004.

The New York Times’ Michael Luo and Griff Palmer analyze the explosive growth of joint fund-raising committees in this cycle, a development that has placed “an emphasis on the high-end check that we have not seen since the days of soft money,” according to one expert quoted in the story. Watchdog groups worry about these joint committees because they “allow donors to enjoy the clout that comes with writing a single large check.”

Bloomberg’s Jonathan D. Salant also takes note of the fact that big money still plays a big role in presidential politics, noting that 47 bundlers have raised, combined, at least $23.5 million for the Democratic nominee. Meanwhile, McCain’s 538 bundlers have raised at least $77.8 million for him. These bundlers are often from industries the candidates routinely criticize on the trail, such as lobbying and financial services.

Finally, in more (hopefully) lighthearted news, Russia’s UN ambassador got a few laughs from his colleagues this week by showing off a fundraising letter he received from McCain’s campaign (campaigns aren’t allowed to accept money from foreign nationals).

Remember McCain bundler Harry Sargeant? We’ve discussed him plenty in the past. You might remember that his company, which ships oil into Iraq for use by American forces, was under Congressional investigation for overcharging the U.S. military.

Today, Rep. Henry Waxman, chair of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter that Sargeant’s International Oil Trading Limited “appears to have engaged in a reprehensible form of war profiteering.” That according to a report by MSNBC.com’s Aram Roston.

Waxman said that IOTC has made a $210 million profit off its oil-shipping contract, one it was able to obtain thanks to Sargeant’s business partner being brother-in-law to the king of Jordan (that business partner is now suing Sargeant). Most shocking of all, Waxman says that a huge chunk of that profit, $70 million, went right into Sargeant’s pocket.

John McCain has already returned $50,000 of the questionable contributions Sargeant helped round up. But now that Sargeant’s been slapped with the “war profiteer” label, McCain could find himself under more scrutiny and pressure to be up front about his relationship with Sargeant.

We’ve all been there – you’re in a remote area and cellphone coverage is lacking or sometimes non-existent. Most of us resign ourselves to being out of touch for a while.

But when you’re Cindy McCain, you get two cellphone towers built right on your property by Verizon and AT&T – two companies that have given John McCain both hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions and over a dozen lobbyist bundlers.

That’s the story, according to The Washington Post’s James V. Grimaldi, and it’s one that goes to the heart of why John McCain’s lobbyist ties are so important. The article makes it clear that the towers were completely unnecessary in terms of providing coverage, and so few people lived near them that they could never be profitable.

Of course, none of that may matter when the McCains are the customers. Why? Well, Sen. McCain has been a friend to AT&T, Verizon and other telecom giants during his service on the Senate Commerce Committee, where he is a senior member and former chairman. And it turns out that McCain and these two companies have had a healthy exchange of money and lobbyists over the years.

According to a Campaign Money Watch analysis of data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, AT&T employees and PACs have given McCain $480,408.00 since 1989. Verizon has contributed $282,572.00. AT&T is his No. 3 all-time contributor; Verizon is No. 11.

A list of the people who have lobbied for AT&T and Verizon forms a virtual who’s-who of McCain’s campaign staff, advisors and fundraisers. They include: national finance co-chair and bundler Wayne Berman, senior advisor Charlie Black, McCain’s Senate chief of staff, Mark Buse, VP vetter A.B. Culvahouse, campaign manager Rick Davis, deputy RNC chair Frank Donatelli, deputy campaign manager Christian Ferry, congressional liaison John Green, former finance chair Tom Loeffler, mega-bundler Tim McKone, George W. Bush national finance chair Jack Oliver and transition team head William Timmons.

In total, AT&T has paid nearly $20.9 million in lobbying fees to lobbyists now connected to McCain’s campaign, with Verizon paying just over $7 million. Those same lobbyists have bundled $600,000 for McCain.

The best way to illustrate these many, many connections is to visit our home page – click on one of the lobbyists mentioned above to see just how complicated this web (with McCain at the center) really is.

All those connections appear to have helped the McCains get good cellphone reception, even though AT&T and Verizon had to navigate through plenty of red tape to do it. That they’re willing to do such favors for McCain suggests they might expect a lot from him if he were elected to the White House. With so many of their lobbyists in McCain’s orbit, they’d definitely have reason to be hopeful.

John McCain may have suspended his campaign, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped the flow of stories about his money and his ties to lobbyists, especially one day after the New York Times/AP/Newsweek revelation that campaign manager Rick Davis’ firm took in money as recently as last month from scandal-plagued mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

The Los Angeles Times’ Stephen Braun writes that McCain’s image as a reformer has taken a hit due to Davis’ Freddie Mac ties.

Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, one of the reporters to break the Davis/Freddie story, explores the McCain campaign’s contention that Davis never profited from the arrangement and had severed all ties with his old firm, Davis Manafort. But, Isikoff reports, “Davis was still listed as one of only two corporate officers and directors of the firm” as of April of this year.

AP’s Pete Yost describes Freddie Mac’s relationship with Davis as “access insurance.” Yost also goes on to note that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae both had an extensive bipartisan lobbying operation that ensured any reforms were “buried under a cascade of dollars that went to both Democrats and Republicans.” (This point is echoed by a Wall Street Journal blog post that goes into the complicated web of Fannie and Freddie’s influence.)

In other news, The Washington Times’ Jim McElhatton notes that while McCain declared a war on earmarks this campaign, some of his top congressional bundlers appear to be big fans of them. And an LA Times blog post notes the highlights of a New England Journal of Medicine article on “the millions of dollars making their way to the campaign coffers of both parties and both presidential candidates.”

Don’t forget – if there’s anything you want to see written about here, e-mail us at tips@mccainslobbyists.com.

Dominating the headlines this morning is a New York Times report about McCain campaign manager and lobbyist Rick Davis’ ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. No, this is not a repeat. While the Times’ original reporting had Davis on the mortgage giants’ payroll until 2005, the new report finds that, after that arrangement ended, Davis’ firm received $15,000 a month from Freddie Mac until last month – when a federal takeover brought its lobbying to an end.

While the money went to Davis’ firm, it was really all about Davis himself, and his closeness to John McCain: “No one at Davis & Manafort other than Mr. Davis was involved in efforts on Freddie Mac’s behalf, the people familiar with the arrangement said.”

As recently as Sunday, McCain had claimed Davis’ connection to Freddie Mac ended years ago.

Davis isn’t the only one of McCain’s Lobbyists under the microscope. The Chicago Tribune’s Andrew Zajac has been taking an exhaustive look at Charlie Black’s ties to a Russian think tank with ties to Vladimir Putin – here’s his latest report.

A key line in Zajac’s piece quietly attacks the McCain camp’s assertion that since Black, Davis and company are former lobbyists, there’s nothing wrong with their influential campaign positions: “It beggars belief that his retirement marks a departure from the Washington influence business for Black, since he retains other business interests at the juncture of the private sector and the federal government and he remains a prince of the capital’s permanent government.

Meanwhile, the New York Times’ Michael Luo looks at the work of bundlers who once backed Hillary Clinton and their efforts to do the same for Barack Obama, even as some of those donors are feeling the impact of the recent market meltdown.

Hot on the heels of a new Obama ad on McCain’s support of insurance companies headquartered in Bermuda, the Wall Street Journal’s T.W. Farnam notes the financial support those firms have given McCain: “A few months after Sen. McCain’s visit there, top insurance executives held a fund-raiser on the island that netted an estimated $50,000. Since then, Sen. McCain has raised an additional $70,000 from employees of Bermudan insurers. Sen. Obama, in contrast, has gotten $12,500 in total from employees of those companies.”

Any suggestions on what we should be talking about here? E-mail us at tips@mccainslobbyists.com.

The Wall Street bundlers for both John McCain and Barack Obama are suddenly in the media spotlight as the markets continue their wild ride this week. At least three outlets – The Boston Globe, The Chicago Sun-Times and The Tribune Co. – latched onto news yesterday from the Center for Responsive Politics (also our source for money in politics data) detailing both candidates’ reliance on Wall Street bundlers.

The summary: McCain’s 69 Wall Street bundlers have raised $11..4 million, making the industry his top source of bundled cash. The names include people associated with (in)famous firms like Merrill Lynch (including CEO John Thain), Lehman Brothers, and the former Bear Stearns.

Obama’s list includes executive of Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. CRP had a harder time coming up with figures for Obama because apparently the Democrat is less forthcoming about his bundlers’ occupations and employers.

Not surprisingly, The Wall Street Journal has taken a keen interest in the candidates’ connections to the banking, investment and financial services industries. Today Elizabeth Williamson reports on how both McCain and Obama advisors have been reaching out to lobbyists for guidance on their proposals to help find a way out of the current upheaval.

Meanwhile, John McCain’s most surefire fundraiser – VP pick Sarah Palin – canceled a round of California fundraisers scheduled for next week in order to meet-and-greet with foreign dignitaries at the United Nations. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci writes that “Palin’s pullout raises speculation that the GOP ticket, which has insisted it will compete here, may be reassessing its presence in the Golden State.” That said, we have a feeling the state’s status as an ATM for the GOP is still on solid ground.

Heard any good tidbits? Send them to our tipline at tips@mccainslobbyists.com.

Today’s Politico fronts two stories about John McCain’s lobbyist connections. First, Jen DiMascio and Samuel Loewenburg report “at least 16 of McCain’s former Senate staffers have gone on to careers in the influence trade.” Three of them are now bundlers for his presidential campaign.

And DiMascio and Martin Kady II take note of a Defense Department decision to delay the competition over the next generation aerial refueling tanker: “The delay might have bought McCain, whose congressional investigation derailed Boeing’s earlier bid for the contract, some breathing room from tough questions about outsourcing American defense jobs to France.”

Finally, the New York Times takes a close look at the gas pipeline project at the center of Sarah Palin’s energy credentials and finds a lobbyist helping call the shots. According to Serge F. Kovaleski and Mike McIntire,  a former lobbyist for pipeline company Transcanada was hired by Palin to help develop a plan to build a massive natural gas pipeline project. Her advice, which was accepted, was to offer Transcanada $500 million in guaranteed state funding. “Ms. Rutherford said in an interview that after TransCanada submitted its pipeline proposal to the Palin administration, she and the governor never discussed whether her role on the team might be viewed as improper or give the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

See any stories you’d like posted here? Let us know by e-mailing our tipline at tips@mccainslobbyists.com.

After a few weeks out of the spotlight, one of John McCain’s top advisers, Charlie Black, is back in the news. The Wall Street Journal’s Glenn R. Simpson writes about Black’s ties to Leonid Reiman, a close associate of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Putin’s hand-picked president, Dmitry Medvedev. According to the report, Black represented a Moscow think tank run by Reiman and his firm received $50,000 in 2005 for lobbying the National Security Council on behalf of Reiman’s group.

The Journal also writes about McCain’s newfound popularity among corporate donors. An article by Brody Mullins, citing the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics – our source for data as well – notes that McCain “drew more donations from executives at oil and gas, real-estate, securities and investment and insurance companies, the data showed. He raised $22.3 million from the top 25 industries in the two-month period, compared with Sen. Obama’s $19.9 million.”

With McCain now locked into using $84 million in public funds, that corporate money is likely to start flowing into the coffers of the Republican National Committee.

Finally, any readers from Maryland might want to take a look at Eli Segall’s profile of McCain’s bundlers in the state that ran over the weekend in The Washington Times.

See any stories you’d like posted here? Let us know by e-mailing our tipline at tips@mccainslobbyists.com.