Why Arizonans dislike McCain

[CrackerDog]

Why Arizonans dislike McCain

 

In a Paradise Valley shopping mall, Martin Dunleavy takes a break from the scorching Arizona sun. He is wearing a cap emblazoned with an eagle and an American flag, and describes himself as somewhat conservative. He adores Sarah Palin, whom he describes as "every man's woman."

 

How about John McCain, Arizona's senior senator and the state's first plausible presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater in 1964? Dunleavy shakes his head: "You just can't trust McCain."

 

Nobody besides a few excitable Democrats believes John McCain will lose Arizona. Presidential candidates nearly always carry their home states. But McCain is less popular at home than one might expect.

 

On Feb. 5 he won less than half of the vote in Arizona's Republican primary. A state poll conducted two weeks ago put him seven points ahead of Barack Obama. It is hardly an overwhelming lead in a state that has voted for a Democratic president only once since 1948.

 

A big reason is that McCain is a moderate among hotheads. "Arizona has always had a vocal hard-right element," says John Shadegg, a congressman who supports the senator. In 1986 it elected a governor aligned with the ultra-conservative John Birch Society.

 

The state Republican Party is dominated by hard cases who object to McCain's temperate record on immigration and taxes. In a January straw poll of activists in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and Paradise Valley, McCain was voted the "most unacceptable" of five candidates for president.

 

Still, Arizona's ultra-conservatives know they have nowhere else to go. Party leaders in Maricopa County have even provided a gritted-teeth endorsement of McCain on their Web site: "Many of us have strong differences with some of John McCain's past positions and policies. Some of us even dislike him personally. But we love America more."

 

McCain's second problem is that, thanks in large part to the hard-right element that so dislikes him, Hispanic voters are slipping away. In the past few years Arizona's legislature has passed a slew of laws designed to make life miserable for illegal immigrants.

 

Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County's publicity-hungry sheriff, has conducted sweeps of Hispanic districts in search of them. This has offended Latino voters and turned them against the Republican Party.

 

Elias Bermudez of Immigrants Without Borders campaigned for George Bush in 2000 and 2004, and is currently trying to win Hispanic votes for McCain. He describes his latest challenge as "100 times harder."

 

Yet McCain's biggest problem seems to be that many Arizonans do not feel he speaks for them. He rarely talks about Arizona on the stump, and did not mention the state once in his acceptance speech. By contrast, Obama repeatedly evokes the streets of Chicago, while Palin often sings Alaska's praises.

 

Several people buttonholed in and around Phoenix were unable to provide a single example of something McCain had done for Arizona. Admirers saw him as an American hero rather than a local hero.

 

Although the presidency is a national office, this is a bad sign. Even at his best, McCain can occasionally seem to be guided by a kind of internal moral compass rather than by the views of people who put him in office.

 

It may be that Arizona's voters have simply noticed this more quickly than the rest of America.