Residents pay tribute to a man they say represented the best of American politics, with a dignity and decency some fear is disappearing

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Julieta Delgado laid flowers outside John McCain’s Senate office in Phoenix, then buried her face in her partner’s arm. They stood for a moment by the collection of bouquets, wilting in the summer heat, and homemade cards that decorated the entryway of the otherwise nondescript building.

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Delgado is a clinical researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, where McCain received treatment. She said their politics were not always aligned but she admired his courage – especially as shown in his middle-of-the-night vote last year, to save the Affordable Care Act.

She pantomimed the dramatic thumbs-down McCain delivered on the floor of the Senate that doomed a Republican plan to repeal the healthcare law.

“That was so courageous,” she said, her voice swelling with emotion.

To Delgado, the late senator represented the best of American politics, a dignity and decency she fears is disappearing in an era of cynicism and partisanship. When she heard McCain had died on Saturday, she wept.

“He always took the right side, the side of the good people, regardless of his politics,” she said. “It’s going to be very difficult to fill his shoes.”

McCain, a Vietnam war hero, two-time presidential candidate and one of the most influential American politicians of his generation, died after a year-long battle with an aggressive form of brain cancer.

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In a statement, Arizona governor Doug Ducey said McCain will lie in state at the Arizona capitol on Wednesday. It would have been his 82nd birthday. On Thursday, friends, family and local leaders will celebrate his life and legacy at a public service at North Phoenix Baptist Church. Former Vice President Joe Biden will eulogize McCain, his longtime friend and onetime rival.

Ducey described the service as a “rare and distinct occurrence for a truly special man”.

“John McCain is Arizona, and we will honor his life every way we can,” he added.

McCain’s body will then be brought to Washington, where on Friday the Republican will lie in state at the US Capitol. The following day, he will receive a full-dress funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral before he is laid to rest on Sunday at the US Naval Academy cemetery, in Annapolis.

That independence, that rugged individualism – he did not march in lockstep with the party line Marshall Trimble, Arizona state historian

McCain was not a native son of Arizona but he represented the state in Washington for more three decades. After he retired from the navy, he remarried and settled in Phoenix in the early 1980s. He entered politics almost immediately.



“Some old political hack advised John to start slowly,” said Marshall Trimble, the state’s official historian who met McCain soon after he moved here. “But that wasn’t his style. He just jumped right in. He wasn’t someone who let the grass grow under his feet.”

Trimble recalled one of their first meetings, when he led the retired Navy pilot on a horseback ride through the craggy Superstition Mountains. At the time, McCain was still more comfortable in a cockpit than in the saddle. But, Trimble said, he “cowboyed up”.

“We were in the saddle all day long and he just stuck right with us. He didn’t complain at all,” he said. “I realized then that he was one tough guy.”

During his first run for Congress in 1982, McCain’s political opponents attacked him over his recent relocation to the state. The decorated war hero responded – in a line he would reprise again and again – that until moving to Arizona, the longest he had lived anywhere was an “unexpectedly lengthy” stay in Vietnam, at the “Hanoi Hilton”. That settled the issue.

McCain served two terms in the House of Representatives, from 1983 to 1986. When Senator Barry Goldwater retired, McCain ran for his seat and won. In total, Arizona sent him to the Senate six times.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Vicllalpando prays in front of a memorial in Phoenix. Photograph: Reuters

A desire for compromise and willingness to buck his party endeared McCain to independent and even Democratic voters in the state, but it also left him deeply unpopular with a swath of conservatives. In 2014, the state Republican party took the extraordinary step of censuring the senator for what they said was “a long and terrible record of drafting, co-sponsoring and voting for legislation best associated with liberal Democrats”.



“It was that independence, that rugged individualism – he did not march in lockstep with the party line,” Trimble said.

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Arizona has a rich history of sending “giants” to Washington, the historian said, and McCain was no exception. Its political lineage includes Goldwater, a US senator and 1964 Republican presidential nominee, and two other influential US senators, Ernest McFarland and Carl Hayden; Congressman John Rhodes; and supreme court justices William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor.

In his final memoir, McCain wrote affectionately about the state that “claimed” him, quoting Goldwater, who once called Arizona “113,400 sq miles of heaven that God cut out”.



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After his diagnosis, McCain retreated to the family’s ranch near Sedona, a sprawling oasis of lush greenery in an otherwise arid state. There, amid the sycamores and cottonwoods, McCain spent his final days.

In Arizona, the late Republican senator will be remembered both admiringly and critically, a war hero and an iconoclast who more than once fell short of his own high standards. The Phoenix New Times, a weekly that was often critical of McCain, said the senator was Arizona’s favorite son but he was certainly her “most fascinating son”.

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Outside his Senate office in Phoenix the next morning, mourners slowly trickled in to pay tribute.

Tina Dennis, of Phoenix, said she was there for “the man, not the politician”. She wanted her 11-year-old son, Anthony Walker, to remember McCain’s sacrifice and his sense of duty.

Anthony proudly put a tiny American flag on top of the memorial. He laid a card next to it. Inside, the message said simply: “Miss you.”