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Lobbyist to Run McCain's Hill Effort
By Martin Kady II and Patrick O'Connor
The Politico
Tuesday 04 March 2008
Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has engaged
a leading GOP lobbyist to coordinate his message and travel schedule with congressional
Republicans - the most concrete sign yet that the biggest battleground
in the 2008 presidential race may not be Pennsylvania or Ohio or Florida's
I-4 corridor but rather the floor of the United States Senate.
John Green, a founding partner of what is now Ogilvy Government Relations,
will soon take a leave of absence from that firm to work as a full-time liaison
between McCain's presidential campaign and Republicans in the House and
the Senate, according to GOP aides on Capitol Hill and McCain surrogates downtown.
Green, a Mississippi native, has strong ties in the Senate after his years of
work for former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), a vocal McCain
supporter who left Congress late last year to set up his own lobbying shop.
Green is part of a small cadre of lobbyists who have met regularly to help
build support for McCain on Capitol Hill. The group, which includes fellow Ogilvy
partner Wayne Berman, has been helping the senator secure congressional endorsements
in recent weeks to ensure he solidifies his status as the GOP front-runner.
McCain could lock up the Republican nomination as early as Tuesday. While the
identity of the Democratic presidential nominee may not be known after today's
primaries, this much is nearly certain: The 2008 presidential race will -
for the first time in U.S. history - pit two sitting senators against
one another. And that means the U.S. Senate - that staid land of filibusters,
cloture motions and unlimited speechifying - will soon become a sounding
board and a testing ground for the White House race.
With two senators in the race - McCain for the Republicans, and either
Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama for the Democrats - Senate leaders
have a unique opportunity to create both opportunities and pitfalls for their
parties' candidates by forcing votes on taxes, national security, health
care and energy.
"The future basically revolves around our candidate for president, who
will be principal messenger for where Republicans think America ought to go
in the next four years," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
"What we do on the proactive side - the offense, if you will -
needs to be closely coordinated with our candidate for president, without ...
turning the Senate floor into a sparring match between the two candidates."
Aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.) were loath to talk about coordinating the congressional agenda
and message with a Democratic candidate until the Obama-Clinton race becomes
more settled.
"The first tangible demonstrations [of coordination] will be that the
nominee will address the Democratic caucus luncheon," said one Senate
Democratic aide. "We'll talk about how to message; ... it'll
all be coordinated with the [nominee's] Senate office."
At some point this spring - or whenever the Democratic nominee emerges
- Reid will appoint a full-time staffer to serve as a liaison to the Democratic
presidential campaign. The majority leader is close to Obama's Senate
chief of staff, Peter Rouse, but he also has close connections with Clinton's
office, should she become the nominee.
With McCain as their nominee, Republican aides say their leaders will work
even harder to keep the GOP unified where they believe McCain is strong: on
Iraq and tax cuts. Last week offered a preview of this thinking as Republicans
embraced debate on a doomed Iraq troop withdrawal amendment and offered an amendment
that would make President Bush's tax cuts permanent. GOP leaders may even
push for amendments they typically would avoid - like a politically loaded
vote on an earmark moratorium - because it could serve to highlight McCain's
solid credentials as a fiscal conservative.
And Republicans say they will try to stave off divisive amendments on issues
such as immigration and global warming, which would illustrate McCain's
divide with his party.
Democratic leaders may elevate kitchen table issues they believe show McCain
is out of touch with voters, like the economy and free trade. A debate on health
care, for example, is also not out of the question, even if there is no intent
to pass major health care legislation this year. Democrats may also tie each
Bush veto around McCain's neck, whether it's a children's
health care measure or anti-torture legislation.
If the presidential candidates bother to show up in the Senate next week, this
dynamic will be on display as the Senate plows through dozens of votes on the
fiscal 2009 budget resolution. Budgets are not headline-grabbers, but every
single vote on taxes and spending has the potential to become an instant campaign
ad: John McCain voted against health care for kids! Barack Obama voted for the
biggest tax increase in American history!
Procedurally, what this means is there will be no shortage of "message"
votes Clinton or Obama can use to illustrate a difference with McCain on a key
issue. McConnell, alternatively, could engineer a filibuster of any piece of
legislation in a manner that could reflect McCain's priorities on Iraq,
taxes or homeland security.
But if the rhetoric and the showmanship showcase the usually mundane movements
of the Senate for a broader national audience, policy substance may be sacrificed
and legislative action will wane.
"It doesn't augur for a lot of legislative productivity,"
said Senate historian Don Ritchie. "Once you have the two presidential
candidates, nothing much gets done."
Ritchie recalled the summer of 1960, when Democrat John F. Kennedy returned
from his party's nominating convention and actually managed bills on the
Senate floor with the help of his running mate, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon
Johnson. Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon, of course, took every
opportunity to preside over the Senate with his gavel, since he was the sitting
vice president and therefore president of the Senate.
For all of the theater, nothing much got done that summer, Ritchie said.
This summer may be equally unproductive legislatively, but it won't be
because the parties' leaders have handed over control to their presidential
candidates. It's doubtful that Reid will let Clinton or Obama manage bills
on the Senate floor, and McConnell is wary of letting the chamber become too
much of an extension of the campaign.
"There's a fine line between advocating things for the future that
you believe are important but are also shared by your candidate, and turning
the Senate into an ongoing debate between the candidates," McConnell said.
"I don't think that gets you anywhere."
Even before Green starts, the McCain campaign has stepped up its efforts to
coordinate message and strategy with Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill in
an effort to amplify their collective voices heading into the November elections.
Top aides to House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) met with members
of McCain's campaign team late last week at his Virginia headquarters,
an aide to the Republican leader said.
Democratic congressional leaders are not ready to talk openly about the level
of coordination until they have a presumptive nominee, but former Sen. Tom Daschle,
who as minority leader in 2004 worked closely with Sen. John F. Kerry's
presidential campaign, is quick to remind Republicans that Reid has the upper
hand in setting an agenda beneficial to Democrats and potentially detrimental
to McCain.
"The floor schedule is the big thing [in the majority] - you have
control of nominations, over Senate business," Daschle said. "That's
a huge advantage to showcase the things you care about. ... You do everything
you can to coordinate efforts and support the nominee."
Kerry agreed. "It was a different story four years ago," he said.
Although Kerry credited Daschle and Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) with trying
to coordinate with his presidential campaign, he said then-Senate Majority Leader
Bill Frist was "always maneuvering to schedule votes and set a debate
that amplified the Bush-Cheney campaign's attacks."
"There was a lot of counter-scheduling," Kerry said. "I remember
flying all night back from New Mexico for a vote that Bill Frist canceled as
soon as we got back. You bet it matters who runs the Senate when you're
out on the trail."
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