January 6, 2000
McCain Urged F.C.C. Action on Issue Involving Supporter
Related Article
McCain's Letter to F.C.C. and Excerpts From Replies (Jan. 6, 2000)
By STEPHEN LABATON
WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 -- Senator
John McCain, who has made fixing
the corrosive influence of money in
politics the cornerstone of his campaign, twice demanded in recent
weeks that a regulatory agency take
action in a matter that ultimately
benefited a major contributor to his
presidential campaign.
Once in November and again last
month, Mr. McCain wrote letters to
the Federal Communications Commission seeking a speedy vote on a
complicated swap of television station licenses in Pittsburgh that would
enable the contributor's company,
Paxson Communications, to buy one
of the stations in the only big market
where it lacks one.
Mr. McCain sent the letters after
he and his aides had met with and
received more than $20,000 in contributions from executives for the company and lobbyists. The head of the
company, Lowell Paxson, who also
lent Mr. McCain his corporate jet
four times last year for campaign
travel, had scheduled a fund-raiser
for Mr. McCain in Florida for this
weekend, but canceled it at the end of
the day.
Today Mr. McCain's letters became part of the campaign after an
article about them was published in
The Boston Globe. Opponents of the
station transfer charged that, when
it comes to the influence of money in
politics, Mr. McCain says one thing
and does another.
The letters did not tell the commissioners how to vote on the license
transfers, which had been in a regulatory abyss for more than two years
as community groups and the stations fought over the matter and
enlisted a variety of lawmakers to
lobby on their behalf. Nonetheless,
the letters prompted an unusual response from the chairman of the
F.C.C., suggesting that they were inappropriate. And other officials said
the tone of the letters made it clear to
them that Mr. McCain wanted the
deal approved, even if he did not say
so explicitly.
The letters are among dozens of
inquiries sent to the F.C.C. from Senator McCain over the years in particular regulatory matters, many of
which were disclosed in response to a
Freedom of Information Act request
by The New York Times. The letters
show that in a number of other instances, Mr. McCain's requests to
the agency involved companies
whose lobbyists and executives were
campaign contributors.
"I respectfully request that the
Commission act on these applications at its regularly scheduled
monthly meeting in December if it
has not acted on them in the interim," Mr. McCain wrote on Nov. 17, in
the Paxson case. "If in your judgment the Commission cannot meet
this request, please advise me of this
fact in writing with a specific and
complete explanation, no later than
Nov. 18." After learning that the
commission still had not acted, Mr.
McCain wrote again on Dec. 10, demanding that the commissioners explain why they had not voted.
Mr. McCain, today portrayed his
action as routine and insisted he had
done nothing wrong.
He even brought
up the matter at a town hall meeting
in New Hampshire this morning and
used it as an example of how the
campaign finance system causes actions by politicians to be viewed with
suspicion, a theme he repeated several times during the day. "Everything we do is under a cloud of suspicion," he said at one point.
"I know Mr. Paxson, but I know
lots of people who come to me and
say that they are not being treated
fairly by the bureaucracy," he said.
"But we are all tainted, because
there is so much money washing
around. That's an argument for campaign finance reform."
"All citizens deserve their government to work," he added. "I think it's
entirely appropriate for me to say,
'Will you make a decision after two
years?' It wasn't that complex." He
also criticized the Federal Communications Commission, saying it had
"the worst reputation of any of the
bureaucracies and at the same time
they're the most important."
Later, Mr. McCain's campaign distributed letters that Mr. McCain sent
to regulators over the years complaining of inaction.
Mr. McCain's chief rival, George
W. Bush, did not use the disclosure to
criticize Mr. McCain head-on, although he suggested that the Senator's action did not comport with his
views on reforming the campaign
finance system.
"I think somebody
who makes campaign finance an issue has got to be consistent, and walk
the walk," Mr. Bush said at a New
Hampshire campaign appearance.
Opponents of the station license
transfer were more blunt, saying
that his request is one of several
examples of how he has used his
position as chairman of the Senate
Commerce Committee, which has
oversight responsibility for the Federal Communications Commission,
to advance the interests of friends
and political supporters.
They also expressed surprise that
that Mr. McCain would make requests over specific matters considering that his political career faced
its greatest challenge more than a
decade ago after he intervened with
federal regulators on behalf another
campaign contributor, Charles Keating, an Arizona executive whose savings and loan failed at a cost to
taxpayers of $2 billion. A Senate ethics investigation ultimately concluded that Mr. McCain had "exercised
poor judgment," but violated no ethics rules.
"I think he is hypocritical on the
issue of money and politics," said
Jerold M. Starr, the co-chairman of
the Save Pittsburgh Public Television Campaign, which has been trying to block the transfer of the public
television station.
"This is a clear case of him responding to special pleadings of monied interests and it is harmful to the
public interests of this community,"
Mr. Starr said.
The proposed transfers would
eliminate one of the two public television stations in Pittsburgh as part of
a three-way television station swap
valued at $35 million that would ultimately benefit a religious station and
Mr. Paxon's broadcasting company.
Pittsburgh is the only television market in the top 20 where Paxson Communications does not have a station.
Mr. Starr and others filed an ethics
complaint with the F.C.C. contending
that the companies and Mr. McCain
broke the rules by failing to provide
all interested parties with copies of
his letters. The letters first surfaced
in Pittsburgh newspapers last
month.
The letters on the Pittsburgh licenses were among many Mr. McCain has sent to the Federal Communications Commission over the years
urging the agency to complete action
in particular cases. Some letters
were written after he or his staff
were lobbied by industry executives
and their lawyers, and while they
were careful to avoid taking a formal
position, many demanded that the
agency complete its work on a particular case, and signaled to officials
that the senator would like the matter approved.
When, for instance, an Arizona-based broadcasting company was
having regulatory trouble in 1998
selling four small radio stations it
owned in California, Mr. McCain
wrote the F.C.C. commissioner asking why it was taking so long. The
commission's review had threatened
to derail financing for the deal.
Shortly after the letter was sent, the
commission backed down and approved the transfer.
And when two large regional Bell
telephone companies, including one
headed by a major McCain fund-raiser, faced sharp questions about
their proposed merger, Mr. McCain
sent a letter with two other senators
complaining that the agency was applying too strict a standard of review.
One of the two companies involved, Ameritech, was led by Richard Notebaert, a friend and leading
fund-raiser for the McCain campaign. The F.C.C. ultimately approved that deal as well, imposing
stringent conditions on SBC Communications before permitting it to purchase Ameritech.
A review of 2,000 pages of correspondences from Senator McCain
and his staff shows that he and his
staff have often forwarded complaints from constituents and others
from outside Arizona without taking
any position, following the practice
of most lawmakers. Many of those
were not contributors, and many of
the issues involved ranged from
broadcast applications to consumer
complaints about telephone bills.
But in the vast majority of those
particular regulatory matters where
Mr. McCain himself sent a letter, the
interested parties had contributed to
his presidential or Senate campaigns. The letters typically have a
boilerplate sentence that says that
Mr. McCain is not speaking on behalf
of any particular party and that the
letter should be treated in conformity with the rules.
In the case of the Pittsburgh stations, the McCain letters evoked unusual complaints of interference
from the commission chairman, William E. Kennard, who responded on
Dec. 14 that the correspondence
"comes at a sensitive time in the
deliberative process" and "could
have procedural and substantive impacts on the Commission's deliberations and, thus, on the due process
rights of the parties."
The commissioners who approved
the transfer were two Republicans
and a Democrat, Susan Ness, who
was been known for some time as the
crucial swing vote and whose nomination for a second term is now before the Senate Commerce Committee.
Ms. Ness said in an interview today that the rules prohibited her
from talking about her deliberations
in the Pittsburgh case and that as a
matter of policy, she has declined to
discuss her pending confirmation.
"I always vote in my decisions
based on the law and the facts before
us and anyone who knows my record
knows that," she said.
Mr. Paxson, whose company has
his headquarters in West Palm
Beach, Fla., said in an interview that
he was disappointed by the McCain
letters because they did not clearly
take a position on the merits.
"I can't tell you I'm excited about
what McCain did," he said. "We went
to every member on the House and
Senate side to get people to write and
tell the F.C.C. to get off its duff."
Mr. Paxson said he had given money to many politicans, and was involved in one fund-raiser in Florida
that was the largest ever for Democrats in that state. "I'm a political
person. Why? Because I happen to be
in a business that politics is very
heavily involved in."
