By DEXTER DUGGAN
TEMPE, Ariz. — If Sen. John McCain hoped his rebuke of Barack Obama for whizzing right past the Phoenix veterans hospital on January 8 would win the senator credibility with conservatives, he failed.
McCain’s local machine still suffered a stinging loss two days later when the Republican Party in his populous home county rejected his big-dollar effort to take over the Maricopa County GOP chairmanship. Like many Republicans elsewhere, Arizona conservatives aren’t in love with “maverick” McCain.
It has been about a decade since a McCain operative headed the GOP in a county of about 4 million people, where Phoenix is county seat — leaving McCain so distant from control that in January 2014, both the Maricopa County and the Arizona GOP annual meetings censured McCain for being untrue to the Republican platform.
Other Arizona county GOPs also issued the embarrassing censures.
Shortly after this new year began, Obama swung through Phoenix to pat himself on the back in public appearances, but once again the president showed his remarkable arrogance.
His limousine barreled right past the VA hospital where news first broke last year that led to revelations of VA facilities doctoring the books and having secret lists to delay vital care for military vets.
Not only was Obama’s scheduled stop at Phoenix’s Central High School just a few minutes away from the Carl Hayden VA Medical Center. The presidential vehicle literally passed directly in front of the hospital on the way.
The Phoenix-based Arizona Republic reported that White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Obama never seriously considered stopping there — even as Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) tweeted that Obama “hasn’t visited a single VA hospital since the scandal broke.”
It was part of the same strange pattern where no important U.S. official joined the January 11 Charlie Hebdo mass march in Paris that featured numerous other national leaders, where Obama jetted off to Las Vegas in 2012 for a fund-raiser upon the murder of his U.S. ambassador in Benghazi, and the president dashed off to play golf after remarking on the vile beheading of U.S. journalist James Foley by terrorists last year.
Obama also avoided visiting the U.S. southern border as surprising waves of alien minors poured across it from Latin America last year, even though he had time then for a photo-op playing pool and drinking beer in Denver.
McCain issued a statement on January 8 that said:
“This morning, veterans in wheelchairs lined the sidewalk outside Carl T. Hayden VA Medical Center in Phoenix and watched President Obama’s motorcade pass by without stopping on its way to Central High School….It is deeply disappointing that the president refused to take time to visit the veterans at the Phoenix VA, where the national scandal of mismanagement in VA health care first surfaced this spring….Unfortunately, President Obama missed another opportunity to do right by those who have served and sacrificed on our nation’s behalf.”
Former Maricopa County GOP chairman Rob Haney told The Wanderer that McCain’s criticism is typical of what the senator does when trying to win back conservatives. “Oh, absolutely, you can see that coming. It’s his standard approach,” Haney said.
The senator is giving strong signals he plans to run for another six-year term in 2016, the year he turns 80.
Two days after Obama’s impudence, nearly 1,000 GOP precinct committeemen (PCs) assembled at a church campus in this Phoenix suburb to elect their county leaders for the next two years. They brought along just over 1,000 proxies, too, so about 2,000 total votes would be cast.
McCain’s machine had been working at getting more of his own people into precinct committeeman positions, as well as recruiting a number of “paper PCs” — people who weren’t asked to do anything except cast a few votes. Committeemen traditionally are the ground troops who keep the party active block by block.
Conservative GOP consultant Constantin Querard told The Wanderer in Tempe on January 10, before the vote, that McCain couldn’t hope for such success as to put the county party under his control, but at least he aimed for a “neutralized party” that wouldn’t take such actions as issuing more censures against him.
“He obviously cared a great deal” about the 2014 censures, Querard said. “. . . It obviously bothered him.”
Querard pointed to a table in one corner of the church’s lobby where two women were busy marking piles of proxy ballots. The women each had dozens of other people’s ID tags hanging around their necks as authorization to cast proxies on their behalf. It looked remarkable, but there was nothing illegal about this.
“I’ve never seen that in my life. It’s extraordinary,” said Querard, a veteran political consultant who carefully calculates strategies.
Haney, the former county chairman, said one of these women had “scores of those [proxy ballots] in front of her in different piles.”
McCain’s team spent around $300,000 in this election effort, Querard said. “That’s a pretty remarkable sum, and a lot of that money came from out of state — Democrat donor, no one who has a motivation to see a strong Republican Party. Quite the contrary.”
Based on what he was seeing, Querard said, “I think Lisa has it on the first ballot.”
A Damaging Effect
Lisa was Lisa Gray, who was widely understood to be the candidate McCain wanted for county chairman. In addition to the flood of proxies for her, there were two other candidates to split the vote — Republican activist Tyler Bowyer and former state GOP chairman Tom Morrissey — and presumably ease the way for Gray’s victory.
However, after the vote, Gray fell short, receiving 46.56 percent, while Bowyer got 35.69 percent and Morrissey 17.65 percent. Morrissey promptly declared he was throwing his support to Bowyer, who won the runoff vote, announced at 983 for him and 904 for Gray.
Querard suggested that McCain’s open support actually had a damaging effect for Gray. “It is clear from the results that if McCain wanted to be smart about it, he should have endorsed the candidate he wanted to lose,” he said.
“Conservatives [endured] McCain’s best shot at the county convention and still won the day. That’s good news for conservatives and bad news for McCain,” Querard continued. “…Oh, they also have a couple of thousand precinct committeemen who all got reminded why they don’t like McCain.”
Earlier in the day, various Republican county officeholders stepped to the microphone to tell the assembly how they were cooperating and serving the public.
Chief prosecutor Bill Montgomery said, “There’s a conservative philosophy in hand . . . in every county office. . . .
“We’re going to work doing all we can” with county sheriff Joe Arpaio, Montgomery added, including against illegal immigration. If the federal government claims it has the prerogative to enforce immigration law, he said, “then it better damn well” do so.
Both Montgomery and Arpaio are politically conservative Catholics. The energetic 82-year-old Arpaio, who said he thinks he can last until age 91 in the office and plans to run for a seventh term, received two standing ovations.
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