K Street eyes McCain warily

Sen. John McCain’s (Ariz.) maverick streak has strained relations with social conservatives. It could also cost him with another key part of the GOP coalition: big business.

The danger of angering voters on the religious right is that they will stay home Election Day. The sting from business, meanwhile, would hurt most in the pocketbook and in a lack of participation this fall by Washington campaign veterans, many of whom now represent the special interests McCain has on occasion railed against.

{mosads}K Street’s prevailing opinion seems to be that the party faithful will come around, even if some lobbyists hold their noses as they write their checks.

“McCain is the lesser of three evils,” said one lobbyist and former supporter of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, comparing the Arizona Republican with the two Democratic candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.).

A fundraiser sponsored by GOP powerbrokers and scheduled for Wednesday at the Grand Hyatt is showing signs of success. As of last week, 39 co-chairmen had pledged to raise $10,000 to support McCain. A $2,300 donation gets a picture with a candidate.

As lobbyists shift their allegiances, however, there is nagging worry on K Street that McCain’s support of campaign finance reform, his attacks on the pharmaceutical and tobacco companies and his quest to cap greenhouse gas emissions will weaken enthusiasm for the presumptive GOP nominee.

With troops still in Iraq and an economy teetering toward a recession, Republicans already feel they are starting the 2008 race at a disadvantage.

“It would be hard enough to win if everyone was in the boat rowing in one direction,” said one Republican energy lobbyist. “We won’t have near everyone in the boat.”

Lobbyists expect McCain’s past fundraising problems, which forced him to fly coach last summer after a steep slide in the polls, will be alleviated by the title “presumptive nominee.”

But enthusiasm also counts in politics, and some seem worried that McCain will not be able to generate enough of it to combat the level of interest in Clinton and Obama.

“I think he will raise enough,” said a third Republican lobbyist. “But are [supporters] really going to break their necks for him? Right now, I don’t have a sense that they will, but that could change.”

Romney, with an extensive background in business as an executive with Bain Management, an investment firm, was the overwhelming choice of corporate America.

He raised more money from McCain from practically every industrial category as rated by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Backers of other GOP candidates can tick off McCain’s perceived list of prior offenses more easily than his positive traits.         
He’s angered drug makers by calling for the legalization of drug imports from Canada to lower costs for prescriptions. At a recent GOP debate, McCain indicated he believed drug makers were, in fact, the “big bad guys” that Romney said they were not.

McCain was a consistent opponent of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which was pushed by some large oil companies.

He now supports a cap on greenhouse gas emissions that a number of energy companies strongly oppose as massively burdensome government regulation.

McCain, a former chairman of the Senate Commerce Science and Transportation Committee, also has upset the cable industry by supporting a provision known as a la carte that would allow consumers to purchase only the channels they want.

McCain’s backing of the surge in Iraq, meanwhile, earns him kudos from national security experts. But his support for overhauling how the Pentagon buys its weapons and his opposition to earmarks that populate the defense budget make some defense lobbyists and executives nervous.

Supporters note a list of positives: McCain is perceived as an ally of telecommunications companies and supports free trade. He is also generally perceived to be right on taxes, although there are still lingering hard feelings over his “no” votes to Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.

Jade West, the top lobbyist at the National Association for Wholesalers-Distributors, said McCain’s opposition to those tax cuts may be his biggest “apostasy.”

But she credited McCain for opposing efforts to repeal those tax breaks.

“I don’t think the business community is going to ask for anything more,” West said. “We are coalescing and coming together.”

But West, who has been involved in campaigns for three decades, said bad feelings from intra-party battles can last longer than inter-party skirmishes.

“It’s much more personal,” West said. “Getting over it takes a tad longer.”

House Republican staffers who have since moved to K Street seem to harbor particular enmity toward McCain, with his opposition to the Bush tax cuts and support for campaign finance reform generally being the most mentioned slights.

Some lobbyists believe McCain was overly aggressive in pursuing the Jack Abramoff scandal. That investigation embarrassed the party and further diminished the profession in the eyes of the public.

Even so, McCain has enjoyed more support from Washington lobbyists, in terms of number of supporters enlisted on the campaign, than any of other presidential candidates, according to Public Citizen, a watchdog group.

Speaking in language most executives could appreciate, the GOP lobbyist who used to back Romney said any “cost-benefit analysis” of pro-business records among the candidates left standing would put McCain’s name on top.

“McCain is still more conservative than Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama,” the lobbyist said.