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As McCain's 2000 campaign manager, Davis was in charge of the campaign's administration, while Weaver handled strategy. And the division of labor might have worked, according to several McCain insiders, were it not for the fact that Davis wanted to play a larger role in strategic decisions and Weaver didn't want to cede any turf. Making matters even more uneasy was the fact that campaign came to be defined in the press by "the bus"--where Weaver, the voluble consultant Mike Murphy, and McCain's longtime speechwriter Mark Salter (who, like Weaver, has an almost filial relationship with McCain) hosted a rolling, rollicking frat party--while Davis toiled away, uncelebrated, back at headquarters. This tension reached the point that, while McCain battled George W. Bush, he also dealt with his own nasty civil war between headquarters and the bus--which ultimately surfaced in the press, with the sides using reporters to stab each other in the back.
When McCain's 2000 campaign ended, Weaver and Davis both started working to convince a reluctant McCain to make another White House run--and to put Davis or Weaver, depending on who was doing the convincing, in charge of the effort. That McCain was in the midst of a profound ideological transformation--even flirting with bolting the GOP--evidently didn't shake either's faith in him. For a while, close McCain watchers thought the Arizona senator would tap Davis, as McCain was said to have grown weary of Weaver's volatile persona. Tipping the scales even further in Davis's favor was Weaver's battle with leukemia, which sidelined him for a stretch. But Davis's bid to lead McCainland took a devastating blow in 2005, when the Reform Institute--a McCain-affiliated campaign finance reform nonprofit of which Davis was president--came under scrutiny for soliciting donations from communications corporations that had business before the senator's committee. After a spate of negative press stories, McCain ultimately stepped down as the chair of the Reform Institute. As one McCain associate explains, "Rick had lost John's confidence."
