John McCain the presidential Canidate America Doesn't Know
"Senator McCain did the unthinkable," she says. "He orchestrated a partisan, mean-spirited, and utterly inexcusable hearing designed to embarrass Governor Mofford by unfairly pressing her, only a week into her new job, for minute details on the Central Arizona Project, which was the most sacrosanct of all issues critical to Arizona."
James McClure is now retired. It's been 20 years, but, when reached by phone, he remembered the incident immediately — though he wasn't sure of all the particulars. He says he recalls the hearing because it was unusual in that there was a strategy session beforehand.
"I know that there was such an effort," the former senator says of the decision to ask Mofford tough questions. "I know that there was quite a little conversation with my staff . . . I know we did ask [Mofford] a number of questions because somebody had told us that she was not well grounded in some of the issues, and it was designed to expose her lack of information."
As for McCain's specific involvement?
"I don't remember his involvement in it," McClure says. "I'm not saying he wasn't, but I just don't remember."
Pat Murphy recalls hearing that McCain later called Mofford to apologize. The former governor says no. She got a different kind of call from McCain.
"He said, 'I didn't have anything to do with that.' And I said, 'John, don't ever call me again.'"
Rose Mofford started off our phone conversation about John McCain by announcing: "He's certainly no Barry Goldwater or Mo Udall."
You hear that a lot around town these days, mainly because McCain tends to bring up Goldwater and Udall a lot on the campaign trail. It drives some people here nuts. Particularly those who know, or knew, all three men.
People who were around then say it was obvious that McCain moved to Arizona to run for office. There have been several instances of such carpetbagging by now (like Hillary Clinton in New York), but it wasn't as common in 1982. To his credit, McCain worked hard and won a hotly contested four-way race to represent the congressional district that covered Mesa, Tempe, and other parts of the eastern portion of metropolitan Phoenix.
Then he had some catching up to do.
He did a lot of it, in the early days, with Mo Udall, the congressman from Tucson. Udall liked to joke that he could hold meetings of the U.S. House Democrats from Arizona in his bathtub. That might be why he worked so well with Republicans. McCain took to him immediately and as Udall's top aide, Bob Neuman, recalls, Udall was happy to help.
Neuman, who worked for Udall for many years in the 1970s and again in the '80s, says McCain "clung to Mo," that he dropped by the office unannounced all the time. This became awkward during the 1986 Senate race, Neuman says, when Arizona Democratic Party operatives worried that McCain was using Udall as a campaign tool. They asked Neuman to put some distance between the two.
Udall's aide tried to be subtle, but McCain got the message. And Neuman felt his wrath. He refuses to repeat the expletives the then-congressman used when he called to bawl him out, but recalls thinking there was something really wrong with the guy.
Neuman says he thinks McCain did try, early on, to model himself after Udall, in terms of developing both a sense of humor and a concern for environmental issues.
In the end, though, McCain hasn't come out too Udall-esque on either front.
Udall's humor tended toward self-deprecation. During a rare break for a golf game during the 1976 presidential campaign, someone asked him about his handicap. "I'm a one-eyed Mormon Democrat from conservative Arizona," he joked. "You can't find a higher handicap than that."
Neuman, who co-authored Udall's book Too Funny to Be President and is now a consultant in Washington, concedes that Udall may not have found humor in McCain's own repertoire of jokes.
One of the senator's most famous:
Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
Because Janet Reno is her father.
Think that one was funny? How about one from 1986, recounted in an entry last month on "The Huffington Post" blog. McCain's campaign denies it. Apparently there's no video, but a Tucson reporter who wrote about it at the time says it happened.
From Huffington:
In an appearance before the National League of Cities and Towns in Washington, D.C., McCain supposedly asked the crowd if they had heard "the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly, and left to die?"
The punch line: "When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, "Where is that marvelous ape?"
"John McCain is the Eddie Haskell of politics," Neuman says, admitting he's a little worried McCain won't find that comment funny at all. "You can attribute that to me, and he'll kill me for it."
McCain did vote with Udall on environmental issues — for a while. But Udall left Congress in 1991, and for years, McCain's earned dismal marks from environmental groups, including a zero in the League of Conservation Voters' most recent ratings.
