McCain says report suggesting inappropriate relationship ‘not true’

TOLEDO, Ohio - John McCain emphatically denied a romantic relationship with a female telecommunications lobbyist on Thursday and said a report by The New York Times suggesting favoritism for her clients is “not true.”\n“I’m very disappointed in the article. It’s not true,” the likely Republican presidential nominee said as his wife, Cindy, stood beside him during a news conference called to address the matter.\n“I’ve served this nation honorably for more than half a century,” said McCain, a four-term Arizona senator and former Navy pilot. “At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust.”\n“I intend to move on,” he added.\nMcCain described the woman in question, lobbyist Vicki Iseman, as a friend.\nThe newspaper quoted anonymous aides as saying they had urged McCain and Iseman to stay away from each other prior to his failed presidential campaign in 2000. In its own follow-up story, The Washington Post quoted longtime aide John Weaver, who split with McCain last year, as saying he met with lobbyist Iseman and urged her to steer clear of McCain.\nWeaver told the Times he arranged the meeting before the 2000 campaign after “a discussion among the campaign leadership” about Iseman.\nBut McCain said he was unaware of any such conversation, and denied that his aides ever tried to talk to him about his interactions with Iseman.\n“I never discussed it with John Weaver. As far as I know, there was no necessity for it,” McCain said. “I don’t know anything about it,” he added. “John Weaver is a friend of mine. He remains a friend of mine. But I certainly didn’t know anything of that nature.”\nHis wife also said she was disappointed with the newspaper.\n“More importantly, my children and I not only trust my husband, but know that he would never do anything to not only disappoint our family, but disappoint the people of America. He’s a man of great character,” Cindy McCain said.\nThe couple smiled throughout the questioning at a Toledo hotel.\n“We think the story speaks for itself,” Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said in a written statement Thursday. “On the timing, our policy is we publish stories when they are ready.”\nMcCain’s remaining rival for the Republican nomination, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, called McCain “a good decent honorable man” and said he accepted McCain’s response.\n“I’ve campaigned now on the same stage or platform with John McCain for 14 months. I only know him to be a man of integrity,” Huckabee said in Houston. “Today he denied any of that was true. I take him at his word. For me to get into it is completely immaterial.”\nThe published reports said McCain and Iseman each denied having a romantic relationship. Neither story asserted that there was a romantic relationship and offered no evidence that there was, reporting only that aides worried about the appearance of McCain having close ties to a lobbyist with business before the Senate Commerce Committee on which McCain served.\nThe stories also allege that McCain wrote letters and pushed legislation involving television station ownership that would have benefited Iseman’s clients.\nIn late 1999, McCain twice wrote letters to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Florida-based Paxson Communications — which had paid Iseman as its lobbyist — urging quick consideration of a proposal to buy a television station license in Pittsburgh. At the time, Paxson’s chief executive, Lowell W. “Bud” Paxson, also was a major contributor to McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign.\nMcCain did not urge the FCC commissioners to approve the proposal, but he asked for speedy consideration of the deal, which was pending from two years earlier. In an unusual response, then-FCC Chairman William Kennard complained that McCain’s request “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.”\nMcCain wrote the letters after he received more than $20,000 in contributions from Paxson executives and lobbyists. Paxson also lent McCain his company’s jet at least four times during 1999 for campaign travel.\nSince The New York Times story was published Wednesday night, the McCain campaign has sought to discredit it, distributing lengthy statements and deploying senior advisers to appear on news shows. The campaign calls the story a smear campaign to destroy the Republican nominee-in-waiting.