Former Arizona state Senator Dr. Kelli Ward is attacking establishment Senator John McCain for his tepid support of the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. McCain and Ward are locked in a tight primary battle, and with early voting underway for the August 30th primary, Ward is looking to court anti-establishment Republican voters who delivered Donald Trump a decisive primary victory over a large field of candidates preferred by the permanent political class.

In a statement provided exclusively to Breitbart News, Dr. Ward slams McCain for supporting his friend Hillary Clinton’s globalist agenda for decades. “John McCain can hardly bring himself to utter the name ‘Donald Trump,’ much less explain why he supports ‘the nominee,'” Ward says. “If it were not an election year with a close primary, I’m sure he would have already thrown Trump under the bus in order to do his normal political chameleon routine.”

McCain was censured by Maricopa County Republicans for betraying Republican Party values in 2014 and has been routinely criticized for only pretending to be conservative during election years.

“As leaders in the Republican Party, we are obligated to fully support our Party, platform, and its candidates,” the formal censure resolution reads, adding, “Only in times of great crisis or betrayal is it necessary to publicly censure our leaders. Today we are faced with both. For too long we have waited, hoping Senator McCain would return to our Party’s values on his own. That has not happened.”

The resolution continues by stating, with “sadness and humility,” the Republicans in the county “rise and declare” that McCain “has amassed a long and terrible record of drafting, co- sponsoring and voting for legislation best associated with liberal Democrats, such as Amnesty, funding for Obamacare, the debt ceiling, assaults on the Constitution and 2nd amendment, and has continued to support liberal nominees.”

Dr. Ward also drew attention to the cozy relationship between McCain and Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton:

Nobody thinks that he actually agrees with Trump’s common sense “America First” platform, since McCain has spent decades advancing Hillary Clinton’s “Invade the World, Invite the World” agenda of arming our enemies abroad and open borders, amnesty, and Islamist-infiltrated refugees at home.

“McCain’s disastrously dangerous foreign policies are why he cannot keep Arizona’s senate seat red in November.”

The winner of Arizona’s August 30th primary is expected to face Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick in the general election.