New York Times: Did McCain have intimate relationship with lobbyist?  AP BREAKING WIRE:::: TOLEDO, Ohio - John McCain says a report by The New York Times suggesting an inappropriate relationship with a female lobbyist is "not true" and he denied a romantic relationship with her.
"It's not true," McCain said as his wife, Cindy, stood alongside him during a news conference.
The Arizona senator described the woman in question, lobbyist Vicki Iseman, as a friend.
Previously, his campaign characterized the New York Times story as a 'smear.'
Could this be the unreported political sex scandal that had the blogosphere buzzing late last year?
The New York Times is detailing explosive charges that Republican presidential front-runner Sen. John McCain had what could be construed as an inappropriate relationship with a Washington lobbyist.
In an article entitled "For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk," Times reporters write that the lobbyist, named as Vicki Iseman, "had been turning up with [McCain] at fund-raisers, in his offices and aboard a client's corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself � instructing staff members to block the woman's access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity."
 The article continues that when news organizations reported McCain "had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist's clients, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement."
McCain and Iseman, according to the Times, both say they never had a romantic relationship.
In a press release at his official campaign website, the McCain campaign issued the following statement:
"It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.
"Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career."
Not long after the NY Times article was published, Iseman's bio was apparently removed from the website of Alcalde & Faye, the firm that employs her. Huffington Post captured a screenshot of the bio. Blogger Will Bunch has an undated photo of Iseman posing with George W. Bush.
Journalist and author Ron Rosenbaum wrote in a blog post from October of last year that he had "run into a well-connected media person, who told me flatly, unequivocally that 'everyone knows' The LA Times was sitting on a story, all wrapped up and ready to go about what is a potentially devastating sexual scandal involving a leading Presidential candidate." The LA Times apparently never did publish the piece, if it is indeed the same story as reported by the NY Times.
Excerpts from the NY Times article, available in full at this link, follow the MSNBC video below...
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Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.
It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended Mr. McCain's political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.
But the concerns about Mr. McCain's relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.
Mr. McCain promised, for example, never to fly directly from Washington to Phoenix, his hometown, to avoid the impression of self-interest because he sponsored a law that opened the route nearly a decade ago. But like other lawmakers, he often flew on the corporate jets of business executives seeking his support, including the media moguls Rupert Murdoch, Michael R. Bloomberg and Lowell W. Paxson, Ms. Iseman's client. (Last year he voted to end the practice.)"
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