McCain has spent $20M on a scorched earth campaign against challenger J.D. Hayworth. McCain pays heavy reelection price

John McCain holds a comfortable lead in the contentious Arizona Republican Senate primary, according to the most recent public polling, making him the strong favorite against former Rep. J.D. Hayworth on Tuesday.

But it’s been a costly road to a fifth term for the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, and the experience is likely to leave a lasting and unsightly stain on his legacy.


It’s not just the $20 million he’s spent already this election or the scorched earth campaign that he’s run. Rather, it’s the choices he’s made and the positions he’s embraced — and what it reveals about him — that could make for a complicated final chapter in his political biography.

Once the sponsor of comprehensive immigration reform with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy — a stance that hurt him with conservatives — McCain moved in a different direction this year. He switched his emphasis this summer to border security, embraced Arizona’s controversial hard-line immigration law and, in an ad, called on the federal government to “complete the danged fence” — three years after dismissing the notion of a border fence in a Vanity Fair article titled “Prisoner of Conscience.”

Four years ago, McCain also told students he supported repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that bans gays from serving openly in the military. But in May, the former war hero and Navy prisoner of war promised to filibuster any bill including that change that landed on the Senate floor.

He sidestepped the climate change debate this year despite once being a Senate leader on the issue and he’s even distanced himself from the term that once seemed central to his political brand — his “maverick” trademark.

Hayworth, the primary election opponent McCain has spent a small fortune pummeling as inept, corrupt and even stupid, has seized on the apparent contradictions.

“Mr. campaign finance reform ... the guy who used to lecture us about the evils of money ... thinks he’s going to buy off Arizona,” Hayworth told POLITICO. “Maybe it’ll work. Hey, they spent $20 million.”

Former advisers to McCain, who declined an interview for this story through a spokesman, were wary of publicly offering their thoughts on how this smashmouth primary campaign — potentially the last for the 73-year–old senator — has changed the former captain of the "Straight Talk Express.”

It’s widely assumed McCain’s move to the right is rooted in political expediency — the Arizona Republican primary electorate is conservative and to win renomination, McCain needed to convince those voters of his bona fides.

While McCain heads into Tuesday’s contest holding a steady double-digit polling advantage, his supporters are quick to point out that there was a time this race was not a slam dunk.

In November 2009, a Rasmussen Reports survey showed the four-term senator clinging to just a two-percentage-point lead over Hayworth, who had not even yet entered the race. In that same survey, 61 percent of Arizona Republicans said they felt McCain had lost touch with those in his own party. Even five months later in April, just a third of primary voters viewed McCain “very favorably,” while a staggering 85 percent said gaining control of the border was more important than legalizing the status of immigrants here illegally.

What followed was a barrage of slickly produced ads and oppo hits that blasted and mocked Hayworth for everything from his comments on the president’s citizenship to his role as a pitchman in a shady infomercial to his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Hayworth, who lost his House seat in 2006, acknowledged the fusillade took its toll. “They subjected me to a withering assault, a multimillion dollar smear campaign. It certainly has had an effect,” he said, while still predicting it would backfire.

“The very thought of retiring and allowing a big government clown taking his place in the Senate is probably something he couldn’t get his head around,” said John Weaver, a former top strategist to McCain who left the candidate's 2008 presidential campaign in the summer of 2007, explaining the aggressive approach. “There was no way that at the end of the day J.D. Hayworth was going to defeat John McCain. Maybe more effort should’ve been made my others to convince J.D. not to run, because it was an unnecessary exercise for both of them, but probably cathartic for John.”

McCain has repeatedly dismissed claims that he’s shifted his positions for political purposes, and has even taken shots at the media — which he once joked was “my base” — for pushing a narrative about his reconstituted views being based on cold political calculus.

When asked about the criticism, his campaign equates it to the early predictions of McCain’s presidential demise in Iowa. “Same old story,” said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers. “I'm sure you recall how in the fall on 2007 these pundits declared Sen. McCain's presidential campaign ‘dead’ and he went on to win New Hampshire and the Republican nomination."

It’s true that McCain didn’t launch his career as a consensus-building moderate, but rather grew into it as he eyed the White House. Before teaming up with Sen. Joe Lieberman on a bill to cap carbon emissions and supporting funding for embryonic stem cell research, he compiled a reliably conservative record as a House member during the Reagan administration.

“McCain has gone right, left, right,” said Arizona GOP consultant Jason Rose, a former aide to Hayworth. “It has undoubtedly hurt his national reputation, but the irony I believe, is his standing in Arizona has improved. I think Arizona will likely regard him as an impressive, historic figure. Will he be Barry Goldwater? No, but he certainly has to be damn near close.”

Rose said he believes McCain has one more political transformation left in him — pivoting back towards his role as a senior statesman in his twilight years in the upper chamber.

“Do I think he will maintain this profile throughout the next six years? I don’t. Because I don’t think that’s his core,” said Rose. “He’s right of center but he’s more enamored with being a centrist Republican.”

In essence, that’s Hayworth’s closing argument: that McCain will revert to his old ways once the election returns are finalized Tuesday.

“If he were to have retired, he would’ve been a respected statesman. Now we all view him as a desperate political shape-shifter,” said Hayworth.

A former McCain aide, who asked not to be identified, said it’s an open question which shade of McCain the Senate would see upon his return and acknowledged the repositioning might affect how he’s remembered.

“This could be a definition for his legacy,” he said. “From 1997 to 2006, that’s a different legacy.”

CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of this story said John Weaver, a former McCain strategist, left the candidate in the middle of the 2008 presidential campaign. Weaver left the campaign in the summer of 2007.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Gabe Beltrone @ 08/22/2010 11:14 AM CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of this story said John Weaver, a former McCain strategist, left the candidate in the middle of the 2008 presidential campaign. Weaver left the campaign in the summer of 2007.