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For Possible '08 Run, McCain Is Courting Bush Loyalists
As the torture policy battle showed, McCain is not reluctant to challenge the White House, even as he reaches out to Bush supporters. Relations between the Bush and McCain camps have improved, but there is no assumption on the part of McCain advisers that Bush will lend him any direct support if he runs for president.
Two-Pronged Approach
McCain's activities, which have been shaped under the guidance of his chief political adviser, John Weaver, reflect overlapping political priorities. The first appears to be expanding his fundraising network, starting with Bush's Rangers (those who raised $200,000) and Pioneers (those who raised $100,000). He also has signed up John Moran, who was finance chairman for Robert J. Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
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The second underscores McCain's commitment to build or bolster political organizations in key states on the nomination calendar. He skipped Iowa in 2000 but cannot afford to do so again, and an April trip there on behalf of gubernatorial candidate Rep. Jim Nussle (R) will help establish a beachhead in that state. His New Hampshire team remains solid, and he has begun to attract supporters of the president.
No state is getting more attention from McCain than South Carolina, given the senator's loss there in 2000. With Graham's help, McCain has been systematically meeting with prospective supporters who were with Bush in the past. In November, he had lunch in Columbia with John Rainey and C. Edward Floyd, state co-chairmen of Bush's finance team in 2004. His team has reached out to Warren Tompkins, the state's leading Republican strategist who ran Bush's operations there. Tompkins said he is "genuinely up in the air" about 2008. Floyd, too, said he is far from committed.
Michigan is another prime target. McCain won the state in 2000, but Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) could be a threat there because of his family roots. Romney's father, the late George Romney, was governor in the 1960s.
"I'll be sitting having a cup of coffee and the phone will ring and it will be McCain," said Charles "Chuck" Yob, Michigan's GOP national committeeman. He described the senator as "a lot more conservative than a lot of conservatives give him credit for."
McCain has helped raise money for the Michigan GOP, and Yob returned the favor at last month's Republican National Committee meeting in Washington by helping to organize a private lunch for McCain with about 20 state party officials from around the country.
Strengthening Contacts
McCain's early strategy includes an effort to build links to party conservatives, or at least minimize their antagonism to him. He made an early endorsement of Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who is running for governor; held a 90-minute meeting last fall with the Rev. Jerry Falwell, whom he had attacked during the 2000 campaign; and attended a private dinner with conservatives, hosted by the American Spectator magazine.
David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said that McCain's "chances are enhanced if there's not a crusade against him" among conservatives but that many conservatives still believe McCain is personally antagonistic toward them. "They think that, if he had his way, it would be a party without them," Keene said.
With Bush heading toward private life after 2008, McCain is building alliances in Texas. His four-day trip in December included receptions in Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and Houston attended by many of the president's leading allies.
A principal organizer and hosts at a dinner for McCain at the San Antonio Country Club on Dec. 9 were former House member and lobbyist Tom Loeffler and his wife, Nancy. Both are longtime members of the Bush political family, but Loeffler also enjoys a close relationship with McCain, dating to their days together in the House in the early 1980s.
That relationship was interrupted by the 2000 campaign, when the Loefflers stayed loyal to Bush. Now they are enthusiastic members of the prospective McCain 2008 operation, and a few weeks after the Texas trip, each contributed $5,000 to McCain's Straight Talk America political action committee. "If needed, I'd wash bottles and change the tires on the Straight Talk America van," Tom Loeffler said.
McCain's host at a luncheon in Dallas was Tom Hicks, who bought the Texas Rangers baseball team from the president and his partners in 1998 and was a Bush Ranger in 2004. In Austin, former representative Kent Hance, a Bush Pioneer in 2004, gathered 38 people at his home on a Sunday night to meet McCain. Among them was Hance's next-door neighbor Joe Allbaugh, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Bush's 2000 campaign manager.
Without endorsing McCain, he said the GOP will need a strong candidate if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) is the 2008 Democratic nominee. "She's very political and a talent to be reckoned with," he said. "The Republican Party has to be as smart, as aggressive and political about the '08 nominee."
While in Austin, McCain, mindful that Bush and the current governor have not always been on the closest of terms and that sitting governors can be helpful in nomination battles, took time for breakfast with Gov. Rick Perry (R), the second private meeting between the two in a matter of months. McCain also met with former governor William P. Clements in Dallas.
From Texas, McCain flew to Florida for a scheduled book-signing in Jacksonville Beach. En route, however, he found time for a strategic stop in Tallahassee, where he had lunch with Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R). Traveling with McCain that day was Mark McKinnon, Bush's chief media consultant, who already is signed up to help McCain in 2008 -- unless the president's brother or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice unexpectedly enters the race.
McKinnon is the only senior member of Bush's team to commit publicly to McCain, but others are interested. One strategist, who played an instrumental role in the 2004 campaign but did not want to be identified because he is still looking at 2008 options, said, "I thought he would be a contender and a good general election nominee, but a year ago I would not have thought I would be seriously considering being with him. Now I am."
Staff writer Charles Babington, special correspondent Chris Cillizza and political researcher Zachary A. Goldfarb contributed to this report.
