Excerpts From the New York Times:
Mr. McCain remains a formidable force in his home state, through the sheer power of his name and fat campaign coffers. Most political analysts suggest that Mr. Hayworth begins as the underdog, and Mr. McCain’s supporters say they are confident.
“Senator McCain takes every race seriously,” said Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the senator’s re-election campaign, “and is confident that the voters of Arizona will again return him to office as they have done in the past, and he is working hard to earn their continued support.
Mr. McCain, a tireless campaigner since he was first elected to the Senate in 1986, is taking nothing for granted. He has clocked many hours doing town hall meetings and other campaign events and has already run three radio advertisements in Phoenix.
His campaign, concerned that Mr. Hayworth was taking an unfair — and possibly illegal — advantage of his position as a talk show host on the right-leaning radio station KFYI (550 AM), filed a complaint
against him with the Federal Communications Commission; Mr. Hayworth quickly resigned from his spot, bringing an end to such orations as “get ready for earthquake amnesty” after the earthquake in Haiti.
Mr. McCain and Mr. Hayworth are not lifetime adversaries. During Mr. McCain’s presidential run in 2000, Mr. Hayworth campaigned for him aggressively. But the two parted ideological ways shortly after that election, and Mr. Hayworth has been dinging him ever since.
But on balance, Mr. McCain has enjoyed a deep base among the state’s more centrist Republicans, independents and Democrats, and his fund-raising abilities — he has roughly $5 million in the bank for this race — and greater institutional support statewide have been unbeatable.
Even within the fractured Tea Party movement, Mr. McCain is not without support. He is endorsed by Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the populist movement’s darling, and Sarah Palin, his running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign. And Dick Armey, whose FreedomWorks organization has become front and center in the movement, says he is throwing his support behind Mr. McCain.
Indeed Mr. Hayworth, a former sportscaster who rode the 1994 wave of conservatism into Congress, where he then served six
terms, has political baggage. He was a very large recipient of both money and largess — like sports skyboxes — from the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. His loss to Harry E. Mitchell, a Democrat, in his 2006 re-election bid was humiliating, and underscored voter distaste for some of his more boisterous ways.
In interviews with roughly 20 Republican voters in Scottsdale and the conservative city of Gilbert, not a Hayworth supporter could be found. “I think McCain’s doing a yeoman’s job, and I’ll vote for him as long as he runs,” said Jerry Ebner, 59, a computer consultant in Scottsdale.
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