Correction: In last week’s column, I wrote that John and Cindy McCain owned ten homes; but since then, the number of homes owned by the McCains has become a matter of dispute in the media.
John McCain was not much help in clearing up the confusion. When asked by Politico.com, how many homes he and his wife owned, McCain did not know. “I think -- I’ll have my staff get to you,” he responded.
McCain’s staff later said that the McCains owned at least four homes; but before the day was over, Politico had found records on eight different properties belonging to the McCains.
Politfact, a fact-checking project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, also puts the number at eight.
According to Gentlemen’s Quarterly (3/18/08), property records show that John and Cindy McCain own at least nine houses, including: two beachfront condos in Coronado, California, a condo in La Jolla, California, a two-unit condominium complex in Phoenix, Arizona, three ranches located outside of Sedona, Arizona, a high-rise condo in Arlington, Virginia, and a loft they bought for their daughter. The value of these properties is an estimated $13,123,269. [A more detailed description of the McCain properties (Lifestyles of The Rich & Out of Touch) is at http://www.mccainvminnesota.com/cribs.html.]
Counting McCain homes is further complicated by the fact that two of the ranch properties consist of several single-family dwellings (six on one ranch, four on the other). These are what ordinary Americans call a home.
So, John and Cindy McCain own somewhere between four and twenty “homes” (depending on your definition of “home”). This probably explains why John McCain doesn’t know how many homes they own, and goes a long way to explaining why he is completely clueless about the problems of ordinary Americans--like paying the mortgage, sending their kids to college and filling their gas tanks. The McCain’s don’t have problems like that. Their problems are different, and their solutions are different.
· “I like the ocean, and the kids love it here, and I love that. When I bought the first [condo] ($2.7 million), my husband [John McCain], who is not a beach person, said, ‘Oh, this is such a waste of money; the kids will never go.’ Then it got to the point where they used it so much I couldn’t get in the place. So I bought another one ($2.1 million).”--Cindy McCain, Vogue magazine, June 2008
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