Rivalries Split McCain's Team

Money Woes Lead to Clashes

As chief executive, a nebulous job in a political campaign, Davis exerted his influence privately, often calling McCain or his wife as he traveled the country supervising the fundraising effort. He was the smooth Washington operative, going back to his days working for President Ronald Reagan. A former managing partner of a powerhouse Republican lobbying firm, he was a bit of an odd choice for a candidate who had routinely taken on "Washington special interests."

Weaver, in contrast, exuded earnestness, a la the McCain of 2000. The lanky Texan saw his work for McCain as a cause -- he was so dispirited after the loss to Bush that year that he even briefly left the GOP to work for Democrats.

That this campaign was going to be different from the guerrilla operation of 2000, when McCain was overwhelmed by Bush's vast superiority in endorsements and resources, was evident from the preliminary budget drawn up last November. A copy of the document, which includes page after page of detailed spending and fundraising projections, was made available to The Washington Post.

Put together under Davis's supervision, the budget envisioned first-quarter fundraising of nearly $48 million. It assumed that by now the campaign would have raised another $23 million and would have spent $26 million, leaving about $45 million in the bank. Instead, the campaign is broke.

Davis, in a phone interview yesterday, said the rosy fundraising projections were taken almost literally from a budget prepared for Bush's 2004 campaign. "Everybody agreed up until about January that the Bush model was a good model -- it worked," he said. "If we could raise as much money, we wanted to do what he did."

The initial blueprint called for numerous highly paid consultants and state directors, mega-offices in New York and California that were to open in the first months of this year, and state offices not just in Iowa and New Hampshire but around the country.

The campaign anticipated paying directors of the larger offices $140,000 a year and directors of headquarters in states such as Iowa and New Hampshire $90,000 a year.

But as January turned to February, it became clear that the campaign was bringing in far less than Davis and Carla Eudy, the finance chief, had predicted.

In part, that was the result of a difficult political environment that was far different than the one McCain faced in 2000. As the situation in Iraq deteriorated, his staunch support for Bush's troop increase became a drag on his national poll numbers. The problem became worse during an April trip to Iraq, where he walked through a marketplace -- protected by 100 soldiers and their vehicles -- and remarked afterward how safe it was. His comments were mocked by war critics for weeks.

McCain attended only a handful of fundraisers during January, and several lavish fundraising "town halls" for wealthy donors cost more and brought in less than officials had hoped. As top campaign aides received daily "cash sheet" e-mails, the fundraising staff began revising the projections downward.

The growing tension about money revived the argument inside the campaign about who was in charge -- and who was to blame.

"This budget is the result of mine and other people's labor," Davis said. "There was no division of attitude toward this budget when it started. I don't think there was any question that, getting started, we were optimistic about how much we could raise and therefore optimistic about what we could spend."