Political Memo
From Run for the White House to a Run Just to Stay in Place
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: June 21, 2010
PARKER, Ariz. — He still tells the story about the call he got at 2 a.m. from the woman in Chandler who was upset about changes in her garbage pick up, and the ossified joke concerning two Irish brothers (“The only ethnic group in America you can still joke about”) boozed up at a bar.
Joshua Lott for The New York Times
John McCain greets guests during a town hall meeting in Lake Havasu City, Ariz.
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Joshua Lott for The New York Times
John McCain, seeking re-election to the Senate, listened to a question at a gathering at a center for the elderly in Parker, Ariz.
Just as he did in 2008, and 2000, and most likely in the tender years of his earliest campaigns here — long before “that one,” maverick, and not-a-maverick — he takes extra time for veterans, freshly scrubbed little kids and older women who wait patiently at the back of a senior center with one of his many books and a camera. He still calls the room “my friends.”
But less than two years after he was defeated by Barack Obama, nothing seems quite the same for Senator John McCain, who has gone from being his party’s candidate for president rallying 1,000 supporters at a Florida football stadium to furiously defending his Senate seat before 60 recession-weary residents in a Hampton Inn in Lake Havasu, Ariz.
Gone are the jovial back-and-forths with veteran biker dudes at state fairs, long bus rides through South Carolina watching the U.S. Open with Senator Lindsey Graham and visions of party dominance in Washington. Gone are his efforts to engage Mr. Obama directly; instead, he portrays himself as taking on the status quo of Mr. Obama’s Washington.
Mr. McCain’s new position is one of defense: he is fending off a primary fight from the right flank of his party in the form of former Representative J. D. Hayworth, as well as withering criticism of his former position on immigration from constituents. He also seems to be engaged in a battle within himself, hewing to the high road, as he has historically done, but at times unleashing the anger he seems to feel about the outcome of the 2008 race.
Mr. Hayworth trails Mr. McCain in polls, fund-raising and endorsements. The Phoenix area is dotted with large billboards for Mr. McCain, and Mr. Hayworth’s campaign remains strikingly upstart.
But between the unusually late primary date of Aug. 24 — which could have an impact on turnout — and the volatility of an energized primary base that has never quite cottoned to Mr. McCain, his team is concerned enough to keep him pressing the flesh all his non-Washington days.
On the trail these days, there is less of the energy generated by a run for the White House. And the candidate often seems to be striking a different tone.
Back in 2008, at a town-hall-style meeting, presidential candidate McCain snatched the microphone away from an older woman who referred to Mr. Obama as a terrorist and protested: “No, no ma’am. He’s a decent family man with whom I happen to have some disagreements.”
The other day, in front of about 100 people at the Parker Community/Senior Center here in western Arizona, a man who identified himself as a Vietnam veteran said, “I want to know what this guy, what’s his name, let me see, Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama, is doing about our health care.”
Senate candidate McCain’s face flashed with brief amusement, and then he gazed toward the scuffed floor and settled into a grimace. “We all want to be respectful of the president of the United States,” he said.
Both remarkably spritely and just this side of cranky, a visibly thinner Mr. McCain zips around Arizona regularly these days, scurrying from public forum to campaign office opening to West Valley business luncheon. The crowds can be loving or volatile.
Speaking without notes on subjects like North Korea, deficit spending, immigration policy and Social Security for 20 minutes at a time, Mr. McCain often reflects the experience and savvy he has come by honestly through years on the stump.
But just as often he squints as if he is bracing for a verbal blow. And he can shift from the animated Mr. McCain of past campaigns — quick with a joke or a warm “Thank you for your service” to a young mother whose husband is on his third tour to Iraq — to being uneasy and defensive about the parochial issues he finds himself hectored about.
“I’m not going to come in here and tell the local government what to do,” Mr. McCain snapped at Darla Tilley, director of the Parker center for the elderly, who pressed him in early June on the lack of nursing homes and assisted-living facilities in her county. A little while later, before leaving for his next stop, Mr. McCain pivoted to contrition. “I hope to be more like you,” he told her.
In an interview later, Ms. Tilley said she had been upset less by the exchange than by the fact that “the senator didn’t really seem to know or understand how many state-funded programs we have lost here.”
If it galls Mr. McCain, a two-time presidential candidate, senior senator and war hero to have to race across this vast state to defend himself against a former radio talk show host who once suggested that same-sex marriage could lead to nuptials with animals, it is not readily apparent.
He never mentions Mr. Hayworth by name and has so far refused to debate him. “I have a day job,” he said in response to one voter who pressed him on this. McCain campaign officials refused numerous requests for interviews.
Most often Mr. McCain is flanked by just an aide or two — the old posse of elected officials and fellow war heroes back home or plotting their own political futures — while he toughs it out at a North Scottsdale library before voters who are not afraid to confront him.
“We all know what happened after 9/11,” said one man in the audience here. “Why didn’t you close this border down? Where were you, Senator?”
The senator sparred at the library with a voter, Richard Martin, who took him to task for 15 minutes over his history of immigration legislation, his distaste for torture and his refusal to debate his opponent. “You won’t have any debates,” Mr. Martin fumed. “You’re afraid of J. D. Hayworth. The people in Arizona deserve debates.”
As several stops with him around his state this month demonstrate, Mr. McCain, whose tirelessness at age 73 is a thing of visual wonder, is often under fire from voters weary of shape- shifting politicians this year.
Nowhere is this more clear than on immigration. Mr. McCain has been dinged for moving significantly from his former position of giving working papers to some illegal immigrants to a border-control-only approach on the issue. But it is crystal clear that this is what his primary constituents want and expect from him.
While border crime has decreased in this state in recent years, the killing of a prominent rancher in the south by what the police suspect was an illegal immigrant set off rage across the state, and helped fuel a tough new state law directed at immigrants.
Repeatedly over three days, Mr. McCain was asked why he had supported “amnesty” for illegal immigrants in the past (“I never supported amnesty,” he says), and how he feels about a proposed state law intended to prevent children of illegal immigrants born in the United States from automatically becoming citizens. (He deflected the question.) One woman suggested she would like to “get a gun” and help border agents herself, a not-uncommon refrain here.
“People in the southern part of the state are not safe in their homes,” Mr. McCain said repeatedly, to the sound of applause.
Yet for all his oratory about Arizona issues, Mr. McCain is also a one-man show of Washington bashing, generally focused on the deficit and the new health care plan.
“My favorite bumper sticker is the one that says, ‘Don’t tell Obama what comes after a trillion,’ ” he said, using a reliable laugh line.
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