McCain's big sugar lobbyist ties...Why he'll screw the Everglades

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There was a recent news article where John McCain was defending his vote against restoring the Florida Everglades. McCain's defense was that it was part of a big omnibus spending bill and that he really supports restoring the Everglades.

Republican John McCain was confronted Thursday about why he opposed an Everglades restoration measure that had broad support from Florida officials, including Republican Gov. Charlie Crist and GOP Sen. Mel Martinez.
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McCain said he couldn't support the Everglades measure because it was part of a massive, pork-barrel spending bill last year. The Arizona senator is a crusader against wasteful spending, a cause that helped push him to national prominence.
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The $2 billion restoration plan was backed by Crist and Martinez, key Republican supporters of McCain. Yet McCain sided with Bush, who vetoed the bill that included the Everglades funding along with hundreds of other local water projects, such as dams and beach restoration.

Nonetheless, the measure became law last November when the Democratic-controlled Congress overrode Bush's veto.

While I didn't think the Everglades restoration bill was that pork laden, this was a valid sounding defense. I didn't think too much about it until I saw this item under the TPM blog.

Even as John McCain has told his campaign staffers that they must not do any lobbying, his fundraising arm is maintaining ties to a lobbyist.

McCain Victory '08, the joint fundraising effort of the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign, has named well-known Florida lobbyist Brian Ballard to chair fundraising efforts in the battleground state. Ballard is a partner in the Tallahassee lobbying firm of Smith & Ballard, which billed $8 million in fees in 2007, according to the St. Petersburg Times. The firm represents the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team as well as cities, counties, hospitals, insurers, utilities, and drugmakers, according to the paper.

Ballard has been a key fundraiser for Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who helped deliver Florida to McCain in the GOP primary. Crist is being mentioned as a possible running mate for McCain in November.

McCain's hypocrisy on lobbying is pretty evident but the name of the lobbyist seemed familiar. Then I recalled, Brian Ballard is a major lobbyist for US Sugar. Big sugar was involved in the 2006 swift boating of our Democratic gubernatorial candidate here in Florida. These two privately owned sugar corporations are one of the major reasons the Everglades have declined. They only exist due to huge subsidies from tax payers that are kept in play by their lobbying efforts.

Based on this association, John McCain will not support the restoration of the Everglades in any meaningful way. He'll throw token efforts at it to appease Florida voters but he's obviously in the hands of big sugar. After the campaign they ran against Jim Davis in 2006, their next target will be Barack Obama using the same unregulated 527s they used then.

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1. But wait there's even more.

Doing a further search, I found this piece.

John McCain's National Finance Co-Chairman played a key role in the recent downfall of former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer (D). Reliable sources informed Politics1 that DC super-lobbyist Wayne Berman -- a longtime confidant of insurance executive Maurice Hank Greenberg -- authorized a private Investigation that discovered the links between Spitzer and a Florida escort service ring. Operating under the alias code-name "Wallace C. Bernheim," Berman directed an 18-month effort that cost en estimated $2.2 million. The investigation was allegedly paid for by a highly-secretive shadow committee Berman directed, informally nicknamed "The Group." Sources tell Politics1 that The Group included Greenberg, Home Depot founder Ken Langone and former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Ken Grasso -- all high-profile targets of Spitzer when he was Attorney General. Key players in funding the anti-Spitzer effort also included wealthy New Jersey businessman Joseph Jingoli and Florida sugar mogul Pepe Fanjul Jr. Berman also retained veteran Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone to transmit the information to the FBI five months ago. The Group also funded an on-going effort by Stone to challenge Spitzer on the "Troopergate" and illegal immigrants drivers license issues. Berman and Stone were previously partners in the Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly consulting firm, whose former clients included Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Angolan guerilla Jonas Savimbi , US Sugar, Phillip Morris Tobacco, and developer Donald Trump. Stone had his only sexual scandal in that past, as he was fired by Bob Dole's 1996 Presidential campaign when it was reported that Stone and his wife were advertising for other couples in sex magazines and participated in swingers sex parties. Stone also organized the so-called "Brooks Brothers Riot" in November 2000 that shut down the Miami-Dade Presidential recount. The funders decided against giving the money to the coffers of New York Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R) -- a sharp Spitzer foe -- because of lack of confidence in Bruno strategist John McArdle.

More lobbyists associated with the McCain campaign (Berman, Stone, and Black) were also employed by US Sugar as lobbyists. John McCain is on record as criticizing the sugar subsidies. Does anyone really think he'll actually do anything about them with 4 lobbyists associated with his campaign working for big sugar?