McCains Bought Second Beach Condo At Around Time McCain Said Struggling Homeowners Needed To Skip Vacations
By Greg Sargent - August 21, 2008, 2:37PM
Here's a fun little find that is likely to give Dems more ammo to blast away at John McCain's number-of-houses gaffe.
It turns out that a few months ago, a McCain family corporation closed on a second multi-million-dollar beach condo in exclusive Coronado, California, at around the same time that John McCain offered his somewhat tone-deaf observation that struggling homeowners were "working at second jobs" and "skipping a vacation" in order to make mortgage payments on time.
Cindy McCain discussed the timing of the second condo purchase in a June interview with Vogue magazine (not online) that's newly relevant in light of the explosive controversy over John McCain's inability to recall how many homes the McCains own.
And in another fun fact that could pour fuel on this controversy, Cindy told her interviewer that the reason they needed a second beach condo in the Coronado building was that the first was too crowded because her kids were staying there and as a result she "couldn't get in the place."
Cindy continued: "So I bought another one."
Here's the relevant passage, from the start of the Vogue piece:
Quote:It is a late Sunday afternoon in April, and I am sitting in a condominium in Coronado, California, taking in the view of the gorgeous San Diego Bay with Cindy McCain. She closed on the place just two weeks earlier, and the only things unpacked so far are the family photos that dot almost every surface. It's her family's second condo in the building. "I like the ocean, and the kids love it here, and I love that," she tells me, curled up on a nondescript couch that looks like it might have come with the apartment. "When I bought the first one, my husband, who is not a beach person, said, 'Oh, this is such a waste of money; the kids will never go.' Then it got to the point where they used it so much I couldn't get in the place. So I bought another one."
According to a July story in The Politico, a McCain family corporation spent a combined $4.7 million on the two condos in Coronado.
If the interview was conducted sometime in April, and she'd closed on the condo two weeks earlier, that means that the latest the closing could have happened is mid-April, and the earliest is mid-March.
On March 25, John McCain said:
Quote:And 51 million homeowners are doing what's necessary: working at second jobs, skipping a vacation, and managing their budgets to make their payments on time.
So at around the time McCain said this, the McCain family corporation was either actively in the market for, or had closed on, a second multi-million-dollar beach condo in the same building which was necessary because the first one was too crowded with their children in it.
TPM has always been on top of this though -- and calling for other media to be more assertive. Hope that things do expand a bit (to other media outlets...)
