Someone is pushing what could be a damaging story about John McCain.

A lot of of us have been wondering how McCain was able to float his campaign during his months in the wilderness. We knew he got a bank loan, but what was the collateral?

The Politico reports that McCain used his fundraising list as collateral. That’s problematic for him because, as the Politico notes

The privacy policy on Arizona Republican’s website states: John McCain 2008 will not sell your information to third parties or any commercial entities.

Fundraising lists are valuable political commodities, since they offer the possibility of millions of dollars in contributions. And campaigns routinely rent or trade them.

McCains use of his list as collateral, however, could open the unlikely possibility of donors suing his campaign for breach of contract.

Already I’ve had a couple of people send this to me questioning John McCain’s sincerity. He’s for campaign finance reform, but his conduct in this is questionable.

Naturally, of course, Keating 5 is a buzz word being bandied about today with this story.

I did ask John McCain’s campaign if they had a response to any of this. I was told they would not be commenting. This is a wonky story, so it might not get any traction, but if one of the other camps can get an aggrieved contributor, you never know. With McCain backing some campaigns in a corner, he better watch out.