We’ve all been there – you’re in a remote area and cellphone coverage is lacking or sometimes non-existent. Most of us resign ourselves to being out of touch for a while.

But when you’re Cindy McCain, you get two cellphone towers built right on your property by Verizon and AT&T – two companies that have given John McCain both hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions and over a dozen lobbyist bundlers.

That’s the story, according to The Washington Post’s James V. Grimaldi, and it’s one that goes to the heart of why John McCain’s lobbyist ties are so important. The article makes it clear that the towers were completely unnecessary in terms of providing coverage, and so few people lived near them that they could never be profitable.

Of course, none of that may matter when the McCains are the customers. Why? Well, Sen. McCain has been a friend to AT&T, Verizon and other telecom giants during his service on the Senate Commerce Committee, where he is a senior member and former chairman. And it turns out that McCain and these two companies have had a healthy exchange of money and lobbyists over the years.

According to a Campaign Money Watch analysis of data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, AT&T employees and PACs have given McCain $480,408.00 since 1989. Verizon has contributed $282,572.00. AT&T is his No. 3 all-time contributor; Verizon is No. 11.

A list of the people who have lobbied for AT&T and Verizon forms a virtual who’s-who of McCain’s campaign staff, advisors and fundraisers. They include: national finance co-chair and bundler Wayne Berman, senior advisor Charlie Black, McCain’s Senate chief of staff, Mark Buse, VP vetter A.B. Culvahouse, campaign manager Rick Davis, deputy RNC chair Frank Donatelli, deputy campaign manager Christian Ferry, congressional liaison John Green, former finance chair Tom Loeffler, mega-bundler Tim McKone, George W. Bush national finance chair Jack Oliver and transition team head William Timmons.

In total, AT&T has paid nearly $20.9 million in lobbying fees to lobbyists now connected to McCain’s campaign, with Verizon paying just over $7 million. Those same lobbyists have bundled $600,000 for McCain.

The best way to illustrate these many, many connections is to visit our home page – click on one of the lobbyists mentioned above to see just how complicated this web (with McCain at the center) really is.

All those connections appear to have helped the McCains get good cellphone reception, even though AT&T and Verizon had to navigate through plenty of red tape to do it. That they’re willing to do such favors for McCain suggests they might expect a lot from him if he were elected to the White House. With so many of their lobbyists in McCain’s orbit, they’d definitely have reason to be hopeful.

Barack Obama’s ad hitting John McCain for owning 13 cars – three of them foreign-made – is getting a lot of press in Michigan and elsewhere today.

But some Campaign Money Watch research – picked up by The Huffington Post – shows an even deeper connection between McCain and foreign auto makers: his lobbyist aides have made $2.4 million in lobbying fees helping them enact their agenda in Washington.

The story has all the details, but David Donnelly sums it up nicely: “When John McCain tells Michigan voters that their jobs aren’t coming back, he’s apparently speaking with inside information. He is receiving fundraising help and advice from a half dozen lobbyists who have also made millions working for foreign car manufacturers.”

John McCain’s presidential campaign released its technology plan on August 14. While intended to show that McCain isn’t as divorced from modern technology as he’s sometimes portrayed, the plan also serves to highlight his numerous connections to Washington lobbyists. See, it turns out that the people who would benefit most from McCain’s plan have also contributed more than $3.4 million to him over his career, including $1,757,173 in 2008 alone.

That’s just one of many interesting items contained in Campaign Money Watch’s new factsheet on the McCain technology plan. The report also details how much money the lobbyists in McCain’s orbit have made off their tech clients, and lists 39 lobbyists whose firms have made big money off tech clients.

To learn more, read the report online.

We all know that John McCain has surrounded himself with big-money lobbyists, but a new analysis from Campaign Money Watch shows just how big that money is.

After analyzing data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Campaign Money Watch found that McCain’s lobbyist bundlers, staff members and advisors had earned over $930 million from clients who have contributed to McCain’s campaigns. Those clients have given McCain nearly $11.8 million.

CMW director David Donnelly connects the dots: ““The McCain campaign relies on big money lobbyists, and they’ll rely on him. In the ‘you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours’ world of Washington, $931 million gets the special interests the best government money can buy. But just think of the payday these lobbyists might expect in a McCain Administration.”

For more information, you can read the press release online.

Campaign Money Watch has just posted a new factsheet on the involvement of John McCain and three of his lobbyists — Rick Davis, Christian Ferry and John Green — in the pending deal between DHL and UPS that would result in the loss of at least 8,000 jobs at a DHL facility in Ohio.

It turns out that both Davis and Ferry lobbied for DHL’s German parent company. John Green lobbied for both DHL and, much more recently, UPS, which stands to gain the most from the pending deal with its rival.

Most importantly, the factsheet raises the question: “How can McCain impartially investigate anti-trust issues when his top advisors recently earned more than $1 million from the companies involved to help them make the type of deal that is under scrutiny today?”