McCain faces Senate threat
Ex-congressman J.D. Hayworth seeks Arizona seat
By SHELDON ALBERTS, Canwest News Service February 10, 2010

First John McCain lost to Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race, humbling enough for a politician who had spent a decade pursuing his White House ambitions.

Now the Arizona senator is in jeopardy of losing his U.S. Senate seat amid a challenge from within his own party ahead of this fall's midterm elections.

McCain, a self-styled maverick who has never been a darling of the American right, is preparing for an unexpected primary election battle against a former GOP congressman who has the backing of members of the anti-establishment Tea Party movement.

J.D. Hayworth, who served from 1995 to 2007 in the House of Representatives, will formally announce next week that he'll seek to wrest the GOP nomination from McCain.

"This is perhaps the most serious threat that McCain has faced in his entire congressional career," says Rodolfo Espino, a political scientist at Arizona State University. "He has never been seriously challenged before - either in primary challenges or general election challenges."

Hayworth was once a McCain ally, campaigning for the Arizona senator in 2000 when he ran against George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination.

But Hayworth has earned statewide recognition over the past two years in Arizona as a right-wing radio talk show host, frequently criticizing McCain for his past support of immigration reform, highlighting his votes against Bush-era tax cuts and casting him as weak on terror by opposing controversial interrogation techniques against terror suspects.

"The John McCain I supported for president in 2000 is not the same John McCain I've watched frustrate conservatives time and again as our senator," Hayworth wrote last week on a conservative website.

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