McCain Defends His Role in Seeking Help for Donor

Republican John McCain, running for president on a pledge to end the corrupting influence of big money in politics, was forced to defend himself on the same topic Wednesday after reports that he recently intervened with a federal agency on behalf of a major contributor.

The Arizona senator, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, said he did nothing improper when he urged the Federal Communications Commission in a Dec. 10 letter to make a prompt decision on whether Paxson Communications Corp. should be allowed to purchase a Pittsburgh television station.

“I didn’t ask them to approve or disapprove [Paxson’s application], simply to make a decision,” McCain told reporters after a speech in which he complained about the influence of big money in Washington. “It was entirely appropriate for me to say ‘will you make a decision?’ ”

McCain aides confirmed that Paxson Communications helped the senator raise about $20,000 in contributions to his presidential campaign and that they leased the company’s private jet for four campaign-related trips--two of them within a day of his Dec. 10 letter to the FCC.

McCain said his campaign reimbursed the company at the equivalent rate of first-class air fare, which is cheaper than chartering a jet.

Still, McCain’s letter to the FCC--barely a week before he joined Democrat Bill Bradley in New Hampshire for a bipartisan condemnation of the influence of money in politics--prompted a stinging response from the chairman of the commission, William E. Kennard. In a Dec. 14 letter to McCain, Kennard said he was “concerned” about the senator’s “highly unusual” involvement.

The five-member FCC approved the television sale to Paxson shortly after McCain’s Dec. 10 letter.

McCain aides said the senator sent at least 15 letters on such matters to the FCC during his three years as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the FCC. McCain also said that he stepped in on the Paxson matter last month because the company’s request had languished for two years before a bureaucracy he considers notoriously unresponsive.

McCain denied that he attempted to influence the FCC decision on behalf of Paxson, but said it is understandable that his crusade to reform campaign finance laws would draw special scrutiny to his own conduct.

“The system taints me as well as anyone else,” he said. “All of our reputations are clouded by this system and big money.”

But the issue could complicate McCain’s attempt to stake his presidential campaign on reforming the problems with campaign finance laws even as he participates in them. The matter is especially sensitive for McCain since he was implicated in the 1989 Keating Five scandal for improperly intervening with a federal investigation of an Arizona savings and loan magnate who was a prominent political contributor.

Campaigning in Iowa on Wednesday, GOP front-runner George W. Bush did not rush to judge the Paxson episode.

Bush told reporters he could not comment until he knew more about it. But he added: “I think it’s really important for people who advocate reform to live to the spirit of the reform.” When pressed on McCain’s integrity, he told reporters: “I think John McCain is an honest man. I wouldn’t question his integrity in any way, shape or form.”

Told of Bush’s reaction by reporters, McCain said: “I agree.”

The report on McCain’s relationship with Paxson Communications surfaced in the Boston Globe on Wednesday, just before McCain delivered a speech on citizenship and the need to halt improper relationships with powerful interest groups that he said were “corrupting” politicians, conspiring against good government and paralyzing much-needed reform.

“Healthy cynicism has soured into corrosive cynicism,” he told hundreds of voters during a lunch at a Manchester Boys and Girls Club. “That is why I have focused much of my campaign’s attention on reforming the practice of government and politics.”

Speaking with reporters on his campaign bus afterward, McCain said he did not dispute the details of the Boston Globe article, but said it did not point out that Paxson made its corporate jets available to all members of Congress when they were not in use by the company.

After the Globe article was published, McCain’s staff released the correspondence between the senator and the FCC regarding Paxson.

McCain’s letters to Kennard requested prompt action and ended with the same disclaimer--that “the sole purpose of this request is to secure final action on a matter that has now been pending for two years. I emphasize that my purpose is not to suggest in any way how you should vote--merely that you vote.”

The Globe reported, however, that the swing vote in the commission’s 3-2 decision in favor of Paxson was made by a President Clinton-appointed Democrat whose nomination is still pending before McCain’s committee.

In a Dec. 14 letter to McCain, FCC Chairman Kennard said the senator’s involvement “comes at a sensitive time in the deliberative process . . . I must respectfully note that it is highly unusual for the commissioners to be asked to publicly announce their voting status on a matter that is still pending.”

Times staff writer Maria L. La Ganga contributed to this story.