McCain taps 'Call Me' attack ad producer to be campaign manager

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Mike Sheehan
Published: Thursday December 7, 2006

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), regarded as a top presidential candidate for the 2008 election, has lined up a controversial attack ad specialist to be his campaign manager, RAW STORY has learned.

Chris Cillizza writes at The Washington Post's political blog, The Fix, that "according to a source close to the McCain operation, the candidate has lined up Terry Nelson to serve as campaign manager," once McCain's campaign becomes official.

Nelson, along with Karl Rove protegé Scott Howell, produced a controversial ad for Tennessee's 2006 U.S. Senate race between Democrat Harold Ford, Jr. and Republican Bob Corker, in which a white woman seductively invites an "off-camera" Ford to call her. Ford, an unmarried African-American, and Corker, the white former mayor of Chattanooga who eventually won the open Senate seat, both criticized the ad. The NAACP said the ad was "a powerful innuendo that plays to pre-existing prejudices about African-American men and white women."

It's not the only controversy in the career of Nelson, who served as political director of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election team.

He was supervisor over James Tobin, the convicted New Hampshire GOP operative who schemed to jam Democratic phone lines in the 2002 election season.

Nelson, along with Swift Boat ad veteran Chris LaCivita, was part of a "grassroots" political strategy firm that aligned closely with Working Families for Wal-Mart, a non-profit heavily funded by the retail giant. Due to fallout from the Corker ad, and under pressure from civil-rights activists, Wal-Mart's ties to Nelson were severed.

He also was involved in disgraced GOP Rep. Tom DeLay's political action committee campaign finance fiasco in Texas.

McCain had already hired Nelson earlier this year as "senior adviser" to the Arizona senator's own PAC, Straight Talk America.