Senator John McCain began tapping into President Bush’s prized political donor base on Tuesday as his campaign announced that Mercer Reynolds, who helped Mr. Bush raise a record $273 million for the 2004 re-election campaign, would be the national finance co-chairman for Mr. McCain.The development was a major sign that the Republican financial establishment was coalescing around Mr. McCain, who has often been at odds with his own party, particularly conservatives.
It also signaled that Mr. Bush’s political apparatus was moving into action for Mr. McCain, a onetime insurgent and competitor to Mr. Bush in 2000 who has had a difficult relationship with the president.
Mr. McCain’s advisers said that Mr. Reynolds, a wealthy Cincinnati executive and a former ambassador to Switzerland, would be of enormous help in reaching out to the president’s most valued contributors — the Bush campaign called them Rangers and Pioneers — on behalf of Mr. McCain.
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