by David Safier
The Star's new policy of using material from "a progressive blog" (not this one) gives me hope the following information, which never appeared in the Star, will get some press. If a few sentences which were quoted verbatim in a dissertation instead of being paraphrased are news, certainly an earmark from No-Earmarks McCain is newsworthy as well -- especially if a McCain campaign donor, SunCor, made a bundle.
The story comes from a 2008 USA Today article:
Price of power: McCain action helped Arizona land developer
The short story is this.
McCain, who has made fighting special-interest projects a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, inserted $14.3 million in a 2003 defense bill to buy land around Luke Air Force Base in a provision sought by SunCor Development, the largest of about 50 landowners near the base. SunCor representatives, upset with a state law that restricted development around Luke, met with McCain's staff to lobby for funding, according to John Ogden, SunCor's president at the time.
The first question is, Does inserting a $14.3 million item in a defense bill qualify as an earmark? Taxpayers for Common Sense says Yes in a sidebar for the USA Today article. And in case you think TCS is a liberal group, its 7 person advisory board includes a Republican political consultant and a former Republican congresswoman.
The second question is, Did the earmark help Arizona? The answer, though unclear, is arguably, Yes. But that's not the point. Earmarks almost always help the state they're for, by definition. And McCain is absolutely, adamantly against them. Except in cases where one of his buddies profits, and then he's for them.
Part of the land bought by the Air Force due to McCain's earmark was owned by SunCor, which received something like 2-3 times the assessed value for its 244 acres. To sweeten the deal still more, SunCor sold half the land to the Air Force at more like 4-6 times its value, then "donated" the rest. That "donation" earned the company a tax deduction. So it paid less in taxes on the deal than it would have if it was all part of the sale.
SunCor's parent company, Pinnacle West, is a long time McCain donor and political supporter.
McCain's campaigns have received $224,000 since 1998 from donors connected to Pinnacle West, including $104,100 for his [2008] presidential run.
[snip]
Pinnacle West's Chief Executive Officer Bill Post, vice president and lobbyist Robert Aiken and former president Jack Davis, who retired in March, are fundraisers for McCain's current presidential campaign. SunCor President Steve Betts, who joined the company weeks after the military land deal, is a former campaign lawyer for McCain and has raised more than $100,000 for his current campaign.
Here's a timeline I've put together for the earmark deal:
- 2001: SunCor had been upset about state and municipal restrictions on its land around Luke Air Force Base. SunCor came up with the idea of the Air Force buying the land. It lobbied McCain and other congresspeople. SunCor said its people met with McCain's staff, but not with McCain. [The distinction between meeting with McCain or his staff means little if the staff put a package together and pushed it to McCain.]
- 2003: McCain put $14.3 million in the defense bill to buy land surrounding Luke Air Force Base.
- 2004: The Air Force purchased a 122 acre parcel of land from SunCor for $3 million. The company donated an additional 122 acre parcel. The total per acre price of the 244 acres -- $12,300 -- was almost twice that paid to Sun Health Properties which owned adjacent land and received $6,600 per acre.
McCain denied that he created the land buy for anything other than the most noble of purposes (Here and here). I guess if SunCor made out like bandits on the sale, they were just lucky enough to get more taxpayer money than they should have. Shucks, that's just the way things go sometimes. But in McCain's denials, he never refuted that his insertion of the $14.3 million into the defense bill was an earmark.
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