WASHINGTON—Senator John McCain has been averaging a fund-raiser a day in America’s pockets of affluence – hotel ballrooms in New York, Atlanta, Chicago – but now he will expand his pursuit of campaign donations at a $1,000-a-plate lunch at the 18th century Spencer House in London.
The transatlantic fund-raiser, to be held March 20 at the home built by the first Earl Spencer, an ancestor of Diana, the late Princess of Wales, comes at the end of a foreign trip that Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has repeatedly said is not political. Mr. McCain is to travel to London, Paris and the Middle East next week with Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut independent.
“I do want to emphasize again that the three of us are going as members of the Armed Services Committee,’’ Mr. McCain told reporters on his campaign bus in Philadelphia on Friday. “And we will emphasize that at every stop.’’
But the trip, which is to include meetings with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Great Britain and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, will serve as a promotion of the senator’s foreign policy credentials at a time when his two Democratic competitors, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, are still battling for their party’s nomination.
Jill Hazelbaker, Mr. McCain’s campaign spokeswoman, said in an e-mail message on Friday that Congress would be reimbursed for the political portions of Mr. McCain’s trip, including Mr. McCain’s flight home, when he will travel separately from the rest of the Congressional delegation.
“We are also paying for the fund-raiser and his hotel that evening in London,’’ Ms. Hazelbaker said in the e-mail.
Spencer House, at 27 St. James’s Place, was built from 1756 to 1766 and is a short distance from Buckingham Palace.
No comments:
Post a Comment