Even with two weeks to go until the election, yet another connection between John McCain and troubled mortgage giant Freddie Mac has come to light.

Word came out this weekend that Freddie Mac secretly paid Republican firm DCI Group to lobby GOP senators to oppose legislation that would have increased regulations on its lending.

Does DCI Group sound familiar? It might – it turns out that DCI Group’s CEO is Doug Goodyear, who was John McCain’s choice to organize this year’s Republican National Convention. And, as Newsweek reported in May, Goodyear’s firm also made money representing Burma’s brutal military junta.

As for McCain’s VP pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, The New Yorker has a lengthy article on the governor’s rise to prominence among the GOP elite – the very “Good Ol’ Boys Network” she so often decries. Part of that, the story mentions, was her quick desire to cozy up to powerful Washington lobbyists after she became mayor of Wasilla.

Of course, McCain spent Sunday questioning the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s staggering $150 million in September fundraising, saying on Fox News Sunday, “What’s going to happen, particularly if you’ve got an incumbent president, and we no longer stick to the … public financing, which was a result of the Watergate scandal?”

Sen. McCain might want to ask this question of himself, as “sticking to public financing” proved to be, well, a sticky point during the Republican primaries. You may remember that McCain opted into the public financing system for the primaries and then decided to change his mind once his campaign took off. Despite the questionable legality of this move, the FEC eventually let him off the hook.

Finally, The Dallas Morning News explores why an Obama administration, combined with a Democratic Congress, would likely result in new regulations on AT&T. As for a McCain administration, the story notes that “AT&T’s executives and lobbyists have longstanding ties to Mr. McCain,” including the company’s top lobbyist, Tim McKone, who has raised $500,000 for the GOP nominee. The article also points out that some of McCain’s “top campaign aides are former AT&T lobbyists, including Charlie Black and Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager. Some of Mr. McCain’s Senate aides later worked as lobbyists for AT&T.”

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.

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.

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.

We kick off the week with a series of stories related to Randy Scheunemann, the McCain foreign policy advisor whose lobbying work on behalf of the nation of Georgia is drawing headlines, in the wake of this weekend’s violence in the former Soviet republic. ABC News’ Jake Tapper says Scheunemann’s ties to Georgia are a perfect example of “the trouble with lobbyists running your campaign.”

However, the Wall Street Journal’s Mary Jacoby says this lobbyist tie may wind up helping McCain, since Georgia is generally seen as the victim of Russian aggression in this case.

In other news, the L.A. Times’ Nicholas Riccardi and Maeve Reston report on McCain’s tarnished maverick image and the campaign’s efforts to rebuild it. Oddly, the top defender of McCain’s “maverick” status is one of the most well-connected power brokers in Washington, Charlie Black, who says McCain has “always been a reformer, always worked across party lines, sacrificed his own political interests to do so.”

The New York Times’ editorial board enters the discussion over what to do about bundlers, citing the Harry Sargeant story as a main reason for concern. Their solution? “The only sure way to eliminate the baleful influence of private, special-interest money is to make sure that enough public money is available.”

And if you wanted more proof that McCain has abandoned his position as a reformer, look no further than the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which reports that the candidate will attend an Aug. 18 fundraiser organized by former Christian Coalition chief Ralph Reed – a man known most recently for losing the Georgia lieutenant governor’s race due largely to his ties to imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a man McCain once investigated.