By Samuel Rubenfeld
While the Democrats were slugging it out in Pennsylvania, presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) began a “Time for Action” tour that took him through some rural areas often overlooked by presidential candidates.
The trip took McCain through Alabama, Ohio and Kentucky where he delivered speeches about paying more attention to neglected areas of the country, but he said there is only so much government action can do. McCain will visit the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans, which was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, on Thursday and Little Rock, Ark. on Friday.
“Government has a role to play in helping people who, through no fault of their own, are having a hard time,” McCain said during a prepared speech in the Martin County Courthouse in Inez, Ky. “But government can’t create good and lasting jobs outside of government. It can’t pay lost wages. It can’t dig coal from the earth. It can’t buy you a house or send all your kids to college. It can’t do your work for you. And you’ve never asked it to.”
McCain proposed a “People Connect Program” that offers incentives to high-speed Internet companies who offer service to low-income rural areas. “An aggressive effort to knit together all of the United States with 21st century information networks will make location less of a factor in the potential for economic success,” he said.
While in Ohio, he told workers in Youngstown that their manufacturing jobs are not coming back, as he remarked during the Michigan primary concerning Michigan jobs.
“The men and women of Youngstown know what it feels like to be counted out,” he said in prepared remarks. “You’ve been written off a few times yourselves, in the competition of the market…. The struggles of this community and others like it matter when we talk about our nation’s economy-they are not just a problem, they’re a priority. What matters most of all is that you didn’t give up.”
McCain’s tour has seen a bit of attention from the press, and The New York Times ran two major articles critical of McCain-unrelated to the tour-in the last week.
On Tuesday, a front-page article questioned McCain’s association to a land developer in Arizona, named Donald Diamond, who allegedly used his friendship with McCain in improper ways to receive special deals on land exchanges with the government. “McCain has helped 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,” The Times article said.
A spokeswoman for McCain was quoted in the article in response, saying: “[McCain has] done nothing for Mr. Diamond that he would not do for any other Arizona citizen.”
On Monday, The Times examined the list of McCain’s “bundlers,” those who raise money from multiple associates and send all of the checks to the campaign at once, and they found that many of these bundlers are lobbyists.
“The sizable number of lobbyists, who are outnumbered on the list only by those working in the financial services industry, offers another example of the balancing act that Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is having to strike as he campaigns for the presidency and seeks to maintain his reputation as a reformer,” the article said.
McCain released his campaign disclosure filings for the month of March on Sunday night. The campaign raised $15.4 million dollars last month, while spending $11.8 million. In the filings, McCain said he had $8 million cash on hand. The fundraising dollars pale in comparison with with those of his Democratic counterparts, who together raised nearly $60 million during March.
McCain also released his 2006 and 2007 tax returns on Friday, which indicated he had a personal adjusted gross income of more than $400,000 last year, but he did not disclose the tax returns of his wife, Cindy, who is far wealthier because of a stake in a beer distributorship set up by her late father. McCain appeared on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopolous” last Sunday, where he attacked his Democratic opponents on the merits of their economic plans. “They are out of touch when they want to raise taxes at the worst possible time when we’re in a recession,” he said on the program. “We’re going to cut taxes. We’re going to reduce spending. We’re going to put a freeze on discretionary spending. We’re going to make wealthy people pay for their own prescription drugs. We’re going to scrub every institution of government and put them out of business.”
This article was supplemented by reports from multiple news services.