After a fervent round of anti-lobbyist posturing by John McCain provoked public grumbling from the K Street crowd, his presidential campaign quietly reached out to soothe their ruffled feathers, Roll Call newspaper reported Thursday morning.
Recently, however, reporters have drummed out a tattoo of stories creating an impression that lobbyists with conflict-of-interest problems had all but infested McCain's campaign, prompting a number of McCain's lobbyist supporters to resign from the campaign or take leaves of absence from their firms. Eventually, McCain's campaign announced a new conflict-of-interest policy for aides, volunteers and consultants, insisting it would not be tainted by the presence of the Gucci Gulch crowd.
