WASHINGTON - Early in Sen. John McCain's first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers. A female telecommunications lobbyist had been turning up with him at fundraisers, visiting his offices and accompanying on a client's corporate jet.
Convinced the relationship had become too close, 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.
When news organizations reported that McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist's client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.
McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, say they never had a romantic relationship. To his advisers, though, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee McCain led threatened his political image.
"It's a shame that the New York Times has chosen to smear John McCain like this," said Charles R. Black Jr., a top adviser to McCain's 2008 presidential campaign and the head of a Washington lobbying firm.
The McCain campaign put out a statement Wednesday night decrying "gutter politics" and saying the story - which had been reported on the Drudge Report Web site in December - was a "a hit and run smear campaign."
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