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A spokesman for Sen. John McCain vowed to retaliate against today's story about how many houses the GOP candidate owns with a renewed focus on Sen. Barack Obama's ties to a Chicago developer and charges that Obama is an elitist.
"We're delighted to have a real estate debate with Barack Obama," said spokesman Brian Rogers, adding that the press should focus on Obama's house. "It's a frickin' mansion. He doesn't tell people that. You have a mansion you bought in a shady deal with a convicted felon."
| Go ahead and bring up the housing issue in a debate, Senator Obama ... |
The felon reference was to Tony Rezko, a former Obama friend and financial backer who was convicted on fraud and bribery charges this year. Rogers vowed to intensify efforts to link Obama to Rezko in the coming days. "That's fair game now," he said. "You are going to see more of that now that this issue has been joined. You'll see more of the Rezko matter from us."
The McCain campaign was in full damage-control mode as the housing story took off today. Rogers tried to play down the story, saying that reports of the many McCain houses were overstated. "The reality is they have some investment properties and stuff. It's not as if he lives in ten houses. That's just not the case," Rogers said. "The reality is they have four that actually could be considered houses they could use."
Those four include an apartment in Arlington, a ranch in Sedona, and two condos, in California and Phoenix, he said. The others include "some investment properties and things like that."
He also added: "This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison," referring to the prisoner of war camp that McCain was in during the Vietnam War. Rogers called the house story "by far the most personal attack" of the campaign, and said "it comes from a candidate who said he was against this kind of thing."
A story is told that when John McCain first ran for Congress, his opponent accused him, in a debate, of being a carpetbagger since he'd lived in Arizona for only a short time. McCain in his response apologized to the audience, noting that given the demands of his military career, the one place where he'd had lived the longest was the Hanoi Hilton.
There was a pause and then an audible gasp from the audience as they took in what he'd just said. He won that election. |
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