Is McCain Okay with His Consultants Moonlighting on 527s?

by Jonathan Singer [courtesy of MyDD]

Conflict of interest, anyone?

John McCain's campaign asked a prominent Republican consultant, Craig Shirley, to leave his official campaign role Thursday after a Politico inquiry about Shirley's dual role consulting for the campaign and for an independent "527" group opposing the Democratic presidential candidates. The campaign also released a new conflict of interest policy barring such arrangements.

Shirley, a conservative public relations veteran, doubled as a consultant to McCain and to the group Stop Her Now, a 527 group barred from coordinating its activities with presidential campaigns. He is not currently on the McCain campaign's payroll, but would also step down from his role on McCain's Virginia Leadership Team, a McCain spokesman, Brian Rogers, said.

"If you're working for a 527 involved in the presidential race, you won't have a named role in our campaign," said Rogers.

I'm not quite sure what that means -- people can't have named roles in the McCain campaign and still work on 527 organizations trying to impact the outcome of the presidential race. Does that mean that the McCain campaign is alright having people working on such 527s secretly advising the campaign in non-named roles? Is there another meaning to such a statement that I'm missing? Either way, campaign finance experts aren't terribly impressed.

Campaign finance experts expressed surprise that a McCain consultant would moonlight for a 527, a dual role that could trigger inquiries from the Federal Elections Commission.

[...]

"When you involve the same people there's at least the risk that coordination will be found," said Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who specializes in election law issues. "The question is why a campaign would want to run that risk -- especially a campaign like McCain's or Obama's that tries to put itself out there as supporting campaign finance reform and opposing 527s."

This type of attitude towards campaign finance from McCain -- not exactly following the spirit of law, playing games despite having previously spent so much time demagoguing on the issue in the past -- should come as little surprise to MyDD readers as it's something we've written about over and over and over again. And even if it seems that the establishment media haven't fully embraced and accepted this reality, believe me when I say that McCain's shenanigans are not being overlooked by a lot of voters who by November aren't necessarily going to see McCain as so righteous or so honest.