If you’re a reporter covering a presidential campaign, never expect the Friday before a long holiday weekend to be a quiet one.
Not only did John McCain unveil his medical records today—a small group of a pool reporters got to review the actual documents, while NEWSWEEK and several other print outlets got the pool report and links to a summary provided by his doctors—but the campaign has finally released Cindy McCain’s tax returns. As you might recall, Mrs. McCain, who files separately from her husband, had declined to release her tax information, citing privacy. “My husband is the candidate,” she told NBC earlier this month. The decision had drawn big-time criticism, particularly from newspaper editorial pages, who claimed the GOP nominee was bucking his commitment to transparency.
Worried that the issue was becoming a distraction to her husband’s campaign, Mrs. McCain changed her mind today. The campaign this afternoon released the first two summary pages of Mrs. McCain’s tax returns, which show she made more than $6 million in income in 2006, including more than $4.5 million what is listed as “rental real estate, royalties, partnerships, S corporations, trusts, etc.” Her “wages”—Mrs. McCain is the chairwoman of Hensley and Company, a large Arizona beer distributorship—were listed as just under $300,000. According to the summary pages, she listed nearly $570,000 in deductions and paid more than $1.7 million in taxes. The campaign says she requested an extension on her 2007 returns but will release that information as soon as it is filed.
There was already much information about Mrs. McCain’s investments. Senator McCain has been filing personal financial disclosures since he was elected to the Senate, which lists ballpark numbers for the stocks and assets owned by him and his wife and kids. Yet the PDFs—click here for the latest, courtesy the Center for Responsive Politics—aren’t too specific. Asked about his wife’s income, McCain listed it in 2006 as “more than $1,000.”
In other words, it was a little off.
