McCain Camp Strives to Skirt McCain-Feingold

John McCain is making a concerted effort to get around the campaign finance laws he championed, the New York Times reports. A lawyer who played a key role in defending the reform act known as McCain-Feingold from challenges is now on the McCain team, expertly advising on the loopholes through which the candidate can rake in the kind of unregulated large contributions the act sought to clamp down on.

It's legal, the Times writes, and not so surprising in a tight race. “There are very, very few lawyers in the country that are better at exploiting campaign finance loopholes than Trevor Potter,” says a former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission. “Of course, that’s one of the odd things about the McCain campaign. 'Here’s the rules we want, but we’ll play by the rules that are here.' "
(More Russ Feingold stories.)