Who are the authors for John McCain?

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There is the group Authors for Obama, organized by Ayelet Waldman and her husband, Michael Chabon, which raises money for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. There is YA for Obama, a community website where authors of young-adult fiction encourage young people to enter the political discussion around Obama. And Largehearted Boy has posted a series of essays by authors and musicians called ‘Why Obama.’

Where are the authors who are speaking out publicly for McCain? Well, Google can’t find them. A search for ‘Authors for McCain’ turns up eight results -- six of those are for T-shirts and other products at Cafe Press, part of an 800-plus ‘professions for McCain’ listing, appearing on a page with ‘Affiliate Managers for McCain-Palin,’ ‘Allergists for McCain-Palin’ etc. The other two are simply commentary.

A Google search for ‘Authors for Obama,’ by contrast, turns up more than 6,000 results.

Where are the authors who are supporting McCain?

Even if there are no groups of authors, there must be some who support him individually. At OpenSecrets.org, which has a searchable database of campaign contributions, I found a few.

• William J. Bennett, former secretary of Education and author of, most recently, ‘America, the Last Best Hope.’
• Linda Bruckheimer of Santa Monica, novelist and wife of film producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
• Nelson DeMille, bestselling author of thrillers.
• Martin Feldstein, Harvard economist and author of ‘Privatizing Social Security’
• Glenn Hubbard, Columbia economist and author of the textbook ‘Money, the Financial System, and the Economy’
• Brenda Joyce, author of the bestselling ‘Masters of Time’ romance series.

My admittedly imperfect method was to search for McCain donors who listed ‘Self-Employed/Author’ as their profession, then check their publication record and check their bios against the donor’s listed place of residence. This didn’t reveal any authors who may have listed another employer (say, a university), so I also looked for donations from some well-known economists who signed on to a McCain jobs plan in July. Still, it’s not a huge list.

If you know of authors getting together to speak up for McCain, send an e-mail to jacketcopyla (at) gmail.com.

-- Carolyn Kellogg