Thread: Even in Ariz., McCain in trouble

Even in Ariz., McCain in trouble
After dropping 20 points in polls, he's vulnerable in state's presidential primary

By Daniel Scarpinato
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/199395
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.02.2007

After a series of campaign blows for the one-time political insurgent, John McCain's ability to even capture his home state has become the latest question mark.

A poll released in the last week shows McCain statistically even with other top Republican contenders for president, as his support in the state has dropped 20 points since February.

If that wasn't enough, voters polled in Republican-leaning Arizona say they would choose Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano over McCain, a four-term incumbent, for his Senate seat if that election were held today.
McCain says "I'm totally confident" about winning Arizona's GOP presidential primary in February.

Other Republican campaigns see an opening, though, as the McCain team lacks financial resources and seeks to recover following the senator's support for an immigration proposal that put him at sharp odds with conservative voters.

"My personal view, based on what we're seeing, is the Arizona primary is going to be wide open," says Jim Haynes, president of the Behavioral Research Center, a Phoenix-area polling group. "I don't see any evidence that Senator McCain is going to have an inside track over anyone else."
While Arizona's delegates and primary may seem insignificant nationally, winning in your home state is a requirement in presidential politics.
Losing Arizona would "be the end of the senator," says Bruce Merrill, a political scientist and pollster with Arizona State University.

"If he couldn't win his own state in the Republican primary, he would be through as a national candidate," Merrill said.

McCain refuses to answer what his campaign is calling "process" questions.
"We're fine," he said Thursday. "We're going to talk about the issues important to America."

McCain's supporters say with the Feb. 5 presidential primary months away, the senator has time to rebound.

But as the summer has proved, this campaign is a far cry from McCain's race against President Bush — when the "Straight-Talk Express" won the favor of the national media and swing voters.

In February 2000, McCain swept into Bear Down Gym for a late-night Tucson rally and made a promise to end the Arizona "curse" on presidential aspirations.

Time Magazine had just plastered him on its cover with the headline "McCain Mutiny."

In the face of $3 million spent by then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, McCain spent nothing here — and still won Arizona's presidential primary handily.

Today, nearly eight years older, a Bush administration later, and in a political climate changed by historic upheavals, McCain is again running from that so-called curse that plagued Barry Goldwater, Mo Udall and Bruce Babbitt before him.

Trapped in the middle
In a back room of the Sabbar Shrine Auditorium off Tucson Boulevard, a loyal group of red-meat Republicans gathers once a week to hear speeches, eat lunch and share jokes.

The Pima County Republican Club isn't exactly McCain country — but you can bet that these are exactly the kind of Republican voters who wouldn't let anything stand between them and the ballot box.
Folks here don't seem all that devastated that McCain's fortunes have turned against him.

"We have felt the sting of the Gang of 14, and things like that, which have left us wondering if he's forgotten the things we care about," explains club president Linda Barber, pointing to McCain's involvement in preventing Senate filibusters on judicial nominees.

McCain has lost support in the rest of the electorate, says local GOP pollster Margaret Kenski, because voters think he's been too closely associated with the Republican president.

"He's paying the price for supporting the war," Kenski said. "The ironic thing is, he's not a big booster for the president. He counseled against what they were doing early on. And he's tagged as being too close to Bush now — and that's ironic, because they haven't been."
In an interview Friday, McCain said of Iraq, "I'm seeing a shift in public opinion in giving this new strategy a chance to succeed, because we are succeeding."

"I would think that if we succeed then it won't matter whether I am tied to president Bush or not — although it's ironic that I was the greatest critic before and now obviously am viewed as one of the greatest supporters," he said with a laugh.

"Class and character"
After riding together from Baghdad International Airport to Saddam Hussein's former Al Faw Palace last December, Jonathan Paton was asked by McCain, a fellow Arizonan, to sit in on a meeting with top military commanders.

Paton, a Tucson legislator, was stationed in Iraq as an intelligence officer.
Once inside, Paton saw McCain launch questions at commanders about troop surges and Iraqi government reforms.

"Virtually everything that the core commanders said, I would later see McCain advocating publicly," recalls Paton, a Republican. "When I see other politicians that are fair-weather politicians, and he's not, you bet I'm going to stand behind him."

"Class and character are always good qualities in a president," says Paton, who endorsed McCain after returning.

And McCain has more and more focused on the importance of staying in Iraq. "No other candidate that's running on the Republican side criticized the previous strategy. They supported it," McCain says. "The fact is I advocated the strategy which is now succeeding."

McCain also says his 25 years of experience in Washington make him qualified to bring real reforms. "The approval ratings of Congress are at historical lows, and people basically have lost their trust and confidence in the government to be working for them," he said.

Tough realities
Unfortunately for McCain, voters might not see him the way Paton does.
Among Arizona Republicans who are not supporting McCain, 12 percent name his immigration position as the reason.

But even more — 16 percent — said they didn't like his positions in general.

Thirteen percent called him "too wishy-washy/rides the fence" — a phenomenon likely related to his position on immigration, pollsters say.
While Paton was attracted to McCain's commitment to staying in Iraq, that stance is a tough one to sell in the current electorate — where more than half of voters say the U.S. should never have gone to war there.
Also problematic for McCain: his cooperation with Demo-crats, including Ted Kennedy, on immigration and his crusade for campaign-finance reform.

The senator admits his support for a failed Senate immigration compromise this summer angered voters. At a Thursday news conference in Phoenix, McCain said, "I get it."

Still, "the conservative Republicans of Arizona really believe he and (Sen. Jon) Kyl sold them out," says Merrill, the ASU political pollster.
Merrill sees Mitt Romney emerging as McCain's major competition in Arizona, in part because of an already mobilized Mormon political force in the state.

McCain says he remains confident of his support in his home state, and he addressed criticisms that he's missed too many votes. "People in Arizona knew full well that I was going to run for president in 2008," McCain says. "In 2000, I missed a lot of votes, and I was re-elected with 77 percent of the vote in 2004."

A new climate
During a recent appearance on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," McCain, 71, teased that some members of the audience may not have been alive when he ran for president in 2000.

A joke, yes, but that campaign — which preceded hanging chads, the war on terror, broken levees and WMDs — does seem a distant memory.
His big issue was campaign- finance reform, and the press covered him in such a positive light that he once reportedly said, "My base is the media."
Somewhere along the way, things changed.

"I'm a great believer that the media is great at building somebody up and when they're done, knocking them down," says long-time McCain supporter Alberto Gutier, a Republican media consultant. "It's just the name of the game."

A year after electing a Demo-cratic Congress, the country also appears to be leaning left, with voters selecting Hillary Rodham Clinton over Republican candidates in national polling.

Now, McCain's campaign is said to be focusing on a September push that will emphasize his war-hero background. Merrill says he believes that, with just a little bit of added effort, McCain's support will grow in Arizona.
But a lingering question — and one to which the candidate bristles — is if McCain will run again for the Senate, in 2010, if he doesn't reach the Oval Office.

"Why would I be thinking about that when I'm running for the nomination of my party for president of the United States?" McCain said Friday. "To be thinking about it now would certainly not be a useful expenditure of my time and thought."

[i]Ross D. Franklin / associated press
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Az should have gotten rid of this guy yeaars ago. He is not a friend of americans.