A wealthy patron. Political favors. Trips to the Bahamas. Exactly what got John McCain in trouble as part of the Keating Five. So why didn't he learn from his mistakes? Meet Donald Diamond, wealthy patron who takes McCain on trips to the Bahamas and receives favors in return.
Read the NYT article.
UPDATE: TPM Muckraker has made the NYT article today's must read. (h/t lmenshevik)
I don't usually ask for recs but this diary is getting lost as dkos seems to be inundated with PA Primary diaries. This story needs to be given more attention. Thanks.
Today's New York Times extensively chronicles the deep ties between mega-wealthy real estate developer Donald Diamond and Mr. Campaign Finance Reform, Sen. McCain, a relationship Diamond characterizes as a "love fest".
A longtime political patron, Mr. Diamond is one of the elite fund-raisers Mr. McCain’s current presidential campaign calls Innovators, having raised more than $250,000 so far.
...
In California, the McCain aide’s assistance with the Army helped Mr. Diamond complete a purchase in 1999 that he soon turned over for a $20 million profit. And Mr. McCain’s letter of recommendation reinforced Mr. Diamond’s selling point about his McCain connections as he pursued — and won in 2005 — a potentially much more lucrative deal to develop a resort hotel and luxury housing.
In Arizona, Mr. McCain has helped Mr. Diamond with matters as small as forwarding a complaint in a regulatory skirmish over the endangered pygmy owl, and as large as introducing legislation remapping public lands. In 1991 and 1994, Mr. McCain sponsored two laws sought by Mr. Diamond that resulted in providing him millions of dollars and thousands of acres in exchange for adding some of his properties to national parks. The Arizona senator co-sponsored a third similar bill now before the Senate.
A spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, Jill Hazelbaker, said the senator, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, "had done nothing for Mr. Diamond that he would not do for any other Arizona citizen."
Heh. I can't even get McCain to answer my e-mails and I live in Arizona.
Over the years, Mr. Diamond and his wife, Joan, visited the McCains at their ranch in Sedona, Ariz., and entertained them in their Tucson home and in the Bahamas, where Mr. Diamond sometimes keeps his 134-foot yacht, the Queen of Diamonds. In 2001, the two men attended a Yankees-Diamondback World Series game together. "He is just very, very good company," Mr. Diamond said of Mr. McCain. "I knew all his people and the staff."
Mr. Diamond and his family have given more than $55,000 to Mr. McCain’s campaigns (and more than $600,000 to other federal candidates). More significantly, the developer has collected (or "bundled") hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from others, and is now serving as a national co-chairman of the finance committee for Mr. McCain’s current presidential run. In the spring of 2000, when Mr. Diamond was in the thick of the negotiations for his California deals, he traveled with Mr. McCain through the early Republican primaries. Mr. Diamond was on the campaign trail again this year.
Gee, I wonder if Mr. Diamond will be on McCain's "Poverty Tour" to help show how McCain is not at all an out-of-touch elitist.
Mr. Diamond is close to most of Arizona’s Congressional delegation and is candid about his expectations as a fund-raiser. "I want my money back, for Christ’s sake. Do you know how many cocktail parties I have to go to?"
To raise money for Mr. McCain, Mr. Diamond invites local Republicans to make fund-raising calls from his Tucson office. Ray Carroll, a member of the council that controls zoning in Pima County, Ariz., said Mr. Diamond followed up on one fund-raising session with a thank-you note "on behalf of Mr. McCain," sending a copy to the senator.
"To reciprocate, if you need any zoning in the county, let me know," Mr. Diamond wrote. (Mr. Diamond said it was the kind of joke he often made.)
What a riot!
So what, exactly has Mr. Diamond gotten from McCain. In addition to the $20 million "letter of reference"
Mr. McCain has been willing, though, to help sponsor bills authorizing federal land exchanges that Mr. Diamond sought... The first two swaps involving Mr. Diamond that Mr. McCain helped sponsor were initially supported by local governments and conservationists, and Mr. Diamond argues the land would be worth far more today. But many Arizona conservationists later protested that the federal deals gave away too much.
"Don Diamond has done very well through these land exchanges," said Sandy Bahr, director of the Arizona chapter of the Sierra Club. "It is the public that got shortchanged."
The McCain campaign noted that the bills left the terms of any acquisitions to the Interior Department, but environmentalists argued that the legislation set the parameters.
"It’s not like there is some market mechanism at work," Ms. Bahr said.
The laws expanded what is now the Saguaro National Park just outside Tucson to insulate it from proposed Diamond projects, including one to build 10,000 houses and four resorts on the 4,400-acre Rocking K Ranch nearby. Mr. Diamond had bought the ranch for less than $10 million in 1979.
In the first deal, Mr. McCain was the sole Senate sponsor of a 1991 law authorizing the Department of the Interior to acquire about 2,000 acres of the ranch, which local environmentalists valued at about $5 million but Mr. Diamond and parks appraisers put at around $30 million.
Over the next five years, the government paid him more than $23 million for the land and traded him two parcels of about 50 acres in upscale Scottsdale, Ariz. And the expanded Saguaro also added to the value of the remaining Rocking K land, where Mr. Diamond is still planning to build 3,000 houses along with resorts and golf courses.
When The Arizona Republic linked Mr. McCain’s support for the bill to Mr. Diamond’s fund-raising, Mr. McCain called the implication "outrageous and disgusting."
Temper, temper!
I can't believe that McCain has a serious chance of being elected this fall. He seems to be a typical Republican in at least the sense of screaming loudest about the very thing he's weakest on - in this case, campaign finance reform and influence peddling. I hope this NYT article is the beginning of an honest examination of how hypocritical and morally bankrupt this man is. Apparently, the Keating Five is not ancient history.