Two high-ranking McCain campaign officials lobbied for companies at center of sex, booze, blow-for-oil scandal.

TPM:

Here's something that could complicate the McCain-Palin reform message a bit: It turns out that McCain's national finance co-chair, Wayne Berman, is a paid lobbyist, and has been one for years, for two of the oil companies that are at the center of the sex, drugs and oil scandal enveloping the Interior Department.

Berman, who's McCain's national finance co-chair and one of the Arizona Senator's leading bundlers, is a lobbyist with Ogilvy Government Relations, which has been paid millions of dollars for lobbying by the Chevron and Hess corporations, according to disclosure forms. The second official, John Green, who is McCain's chief liaison to Congress, also was with Ogilvy and worked on those same contracts until joining the campaign

According to Senate lobbying disclosure forms, Ogilvy -- represented by Berman and Green -- lobbied for Chevron and Hess from 2005 to the present, and was paid a total of $2.36 million by the companies. They had enlisted Ogilvy's help in order to influence Congress on such issues as comprehensive energy reform, energy price-gouging, and other issues related to liquefied natural gas.

Both Berman and Green lobbied for the companies for about three years, continuing when the scandals were already public knowledge, and Beman is still lobbying for them. It's legit to ask why Berman wouldn't have cut ties with the companies at a time when he's working for McCain, even merely for appearances' sake.