In the 1980s, the U.S. government was anything but clean. After the landmark Supreme Court cases we told you about in Episode 5 turned money into “speech” in the 1970s, cash began flowing into elections unchecked. Big donors also expected big favors.
It wasn’t such a surprise, then, when five U.S. senators got caught in 1989 for allegedly trying to pressure a federal bank regulator to go easy on savings and loan magnate Charles Keating. But what no one expected was that one of the so-called “Keating Five,” a relative newcomer named John McCain, would do far more than apologize for his mistakes; he’d transform into the staunchest campaign finance reformer since Watergate.
McCain would need his unpredictable “maverick” energy for the fights ahead. Because once he set his sights on wrangling the dark money out of politics, he’d find himself butting heads with two powerful members of his own party — a senator who’d been called the “Darth Vader of campaign finance reform,” and a governor-turned-president backed by big donors.
The Evidence
We’ve pieced together the history of these events by uncovering archival evidence such as:
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