IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:The Arizona Republic: “Senator John McCain Banks On Earmark Crusade”
“Sen. John McCain suggested Friday that his well-known crusade against government waste and earmarks will help sustain his re-election bid despite a hostile, anti-incumbent national political mood. …‘Americans are angry and frustrated, as I’ve said,’ McCain said Friday after filing more than 15,000 petition signatures with the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office to qualify for this year’s ballot. ‘It’s very clear that they are on both sides. In Arkansas, a moderate Democrat is being challenged by a very liberal Democrat. But the message in Republican primaries: no earmarking, no pork-barreling, stop the spending. Congressman Hayworth: one of the biggest
earmarkers and pork-barrelers there was. It leads to corruption, and there was corruption.’” – The Arizona Republic
May 23, 2010The Arizona Republic
Sen. John McCain suggested Friday that his well-known crusade against government waste and earmarks will help sustain his re-election bid despite a hostile, anti-incumbent national political mood.
On Tuesday, longtime Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., was ousted in his state’s Democratic primary. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., was unable to avoid a runoff. Rand Paul, an anti-establishment “tea party” Republican, captured Kentucky’s GOP nomination.
In Arizona’s Aug. 24 primary, McCain, a four-term Arizona Republican, is facing an aggressive challenge from J.D. Hayworth, a former six-term Arizona congressman and conservative radio talk-show host.
“Americans are angry and frustrated, as I’ve said,” McCain said Friday after filing more than 15,000 (actually 16.070) petition signatures with the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office to qualify for this year’s ballot. “It’s very clear that they are on both sides. In Arkansas, a moderate Democrat is being challenged by a very liberal
Democrat. But the message in Republican primaries: no earmarking, no pork-barreling, stop the spending.
Congressman Hayworth: one of the biggest earmarkers and pork-barrelers there was. It leads to corruption, and there was corruption.”
Mark Sanders, Hayworth’s spokesman, responded by accusing McCain of distorting Hayworth’s record on spending. “It’s the same old, tired Washington politics, where you take a piece of information and you twist the facts, and people are tired of it,” Sanders said.
McCain also noted that at least four conservative Arizona tea-party organizations are not picking sides in the Senate primary.
“I appreciate the tea partyers,” he said. “I think they’re doing a great job.
In other developments:
• Mark Buse is McCain’s new campaign manager. Buse is a veteran McCain aide who got his start in the 1980s as an intern in McCain’s House office. More recently, he was McCain’s Senate chief of staff. Buse replaces Shiree Verdone, who recently departed as part of a staff shake-up. Grant Woods, a former Arizona attorney general and another longtime McCain ally, has officially joined the campaign as a senior adviser.
• A Rasmussen Reports poll released Wednesday showed McCain leading Hayworth by 12 percentage points among likely GOP primary voters. But that hasn’t stopped Hayworth from running a fundraising Web ad prominently quoting an earlier Rasmussen poll that showed Hayworth just 5 points down. “It seems incredibly dishonest,” said Brian Rogers, McCain’s spokesman. Sanders acknowledged the Hayworth campaign is still running the Web ad, but also noted that it has distributed the results of the latest poll, which Rasmussen characterized as still showing McCain with Specter-like vulnerability.
• The House of Representatives on Thursday voted 409-1 to rename the Interior Department building in Washington, D.C., in honor of former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, an environmentalist hero who died March 20. Udall was an Arizona congressman before serving in the cabinets of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. “What he did, beginning five decades ago, as secretary of the Interior shaped the nation we are today,” said Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz. The Senate still needs to act
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