Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who voted with Sen. John McCain against undoing Obamacare, said that he “felt very strongly about virtually every issue that he tackled, but it was never based in partisanship.” | Evan Vucci/AP Photo McCain remembered for bipartisanship, decisive Obamacare vote

Sen. John McCain was memorialized by Republicans and Democrats on Sunday for his willingness to reach across the aisle and break with his own party — even if it doomed the GOP’s plans to undo Obamacare.

Sen. Jeff Flake said he admired his fellow Arizona Republican for casting the deciding vote against a bill last year that would have repealed Democrats’ signature health care law.


Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, McCain’s one-time Senate colleague, said the health care fight was a “heartbreaking” episode for a man who “knew that the Senate couldn’t work if we didn’t work together.”

Flake, who supported the failed Obamacare repeal effort, said McCain’s vote was “John through and through.”

“John McCain is quintessentially Arizonan,” Flake said in a CNN interview. “He’s a maverick. He’s independent. I didn’t vote the same way he did, but I admired him for doing what he did.”

Flake said McCain’s biggest issue at the time was that Republicans weren’t working across the aisle.

“He was a huge institutionalist and loved the Senate because the Senate forces individuals and parties to come together and he wasn’t seeing that,” he said. “And we haven’t been that kind of institution for a while.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also voted against undoing the health care law, said on CNN that McCain “felt very strongly about virtually every issue that he tackled, but it was never based in partisanship.”

Collins recalled the huddle among the three Republicans before McCain cast his vote.

“Lisa and I crossed the Senate floor to where John was sitting, and we knew that he was struggling with the issue,” she said. “We sat down and started talking with him. and all of a sudden he pointed to the two of us and said, ‘You two are right.’ And that’s when I knew that he was going to vote no.”

Collins said she then felt a tap on her shoulder — it was Vice President Mike Pence, who had been sent to make a last-ditch appeal to McCain to deliver on a top GOP campaign pledge.

“I stepped aside so they could have their conversation,” she said. “But once John McCain made up his mind about something, there was no shaking him, and I knew that he would be there on the final vote.”

In an interview with NBC, Hillary Clinton said McCain “really understood in the marrow of his bones what it meant to be an American and how important it was for us to, yes, disagree and differ, but, at the end of the day, to come together, to work together, to trust each other to get things done.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in an interview with ABC, remembered working closely with McCain on veterans issues and his signature campaign finance reform law.

“He was generous with his sharing of credit to my colleagues,” she said. “But in fact what he did was quite a remarkable thing for our country, preserving our freedoms.”