Records show McCain more bipartisan

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By Stephen Dinan

But foremost, his campaign cites his work teaming up in 2006 with Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican, on the Cooperative Proliferation Detection Act, a noncontroversial measure to secure weapons of mass destruction, and with Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, to force the administration to create a searchable database to track federal spending grants.

Speaking to reporters during the Republican National Convention earlier this month Obama aide Robert Gibbs said Mr. Lugar and Mr. Coburn would back up Mr. Obama's bipartisanship claims.

Mr. Lugar's spokesman said the senator is not doing interviews on the subject. Mr. Coburn, in an interview, said Mr. Obama is a good senator to work with, but said there's no comparison to Mr. McCain's long record.

"Barack is a great guy, a nice guy, he's a good friend of mine. He has passed two pieces of legislation since he's been in the Senate - had his name on two," Mr. Coburn said. He praised Mr. Obama's staff for the work they did on the spending grants bill, but he said Mr. Obama hasn't gone head-to-head against his leadership when it mattered: "Where have you seen him challenge the status quo?"

Mr. McCain on the campaign trail cites his own frequent Democratic legislative allies such as Mr. Lieberman, with whom he's worked on gun control and global warming; Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who was his partner for immigration and patients' rights; Sen. Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, who worked with him on campaign finance; and Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, who was the top Democrat on the Indian Affairs Committee when Mr. McCain was chairman.

Mr. Feingold, Mr. Dorgan and Mr. Kennedy didn't respond or declined through spokesmen to talk about the issue. Mr. Lieberman, however, has gone in the opposite direction, endorsing Mr. McCain for office and hitting Mr. Obama for failing to live up to his bipartisan claims.

Mr. Graham said it was unfortunate people weren't recognizing their work with Mr. McCain.

"What you've got now is, you've got some people who are afraid to recognize John's bipartisanship because of the nature of the election," Mr. Graham said.

Mr. Graham has teamed up with Mr. McCain on some of his most contentious bills, including the immigration and campaign-finance fights, and said they both have "the scars to prove" they were in the fights.

"I have experienced the price that's been paid to help John do some difficult things since 2004," he said.

Those fights are part of the reason Mr. McCain had trouble securing the Republican presidential nomination, including winning less than 50 percent of Republican primary voters' support, despite clearing the field less than halfway through the primaries.

The Times analysis found Mr. McCain's most frequent Democratic teammates are Mr. Dorgan, with whom he shared leadership of the Indian Affairs Committee and who co-sponsored 23 of Mr. McCain's bills, and Mr. Lieberman, who signed onto 15 McCain bills.

Mr. Obama's most frequent Republican partners were Mr. Lugar, who co-sponsored nine Obama bills, and Sen. Norm Coleman, Minnesota Republican, who signed on to eight of Mr. Obama's measures.

The bill on which Mr. McCain attracted the most support in the past few years was his plan to combat greenhouse-gas emissions. That bill garnered 16 co-sponsors, 14 of whom were Democrats, including Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrats' vice-presidential nominee. Mr. Obama himself signed onto another of Mr. McCain's global-warming bills.

Mr. Obama's best successes in attracting co-sponsors came on a bill to boost the union's bargaining power with the Federal Aviation Administration, on which all 38 co-sponsors were Democrats, and a bill to issue a postage stamp honoring Mrs. Parks, which garnered 24 Democrats and 14 Republicans.

The Times study didn't look at voting, but Congressional Quarterly conducts annual studies of senators' voting records.

Over his Senate career, Mr. McCain has voted with the majority of Senate Republicans about 85 percent of the time, while in his three years in the Senate Mr. Obama has voted with his party 97 percent of the time.