By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — There’s no earthly chasm disrupting tree-lined Central Avenue here as it placidly heads north of Bethany Home Road, past well-off residences.
However, there might as well have been an abyss between U.S. Sen. John McCain’s former home on Central and the church auditorium not far away where local Republican precinct committeemen convened for their annual assembly.
McCain left that neighborhood once his children were grown, and the regular January meeting of Maricopa County GOP precinct ground troops, resounding with denunciations of their own party’s dispiriting record, in effect voted overwhelmingly that McCain should leave the Senate, too, although he’s currently running for his sixth term there.
The January 16 vote on the “Anyone But McCain” resolution passed overwhelmingly, 921 to 582.
McCain is scheduled to face four Republican challengers in Arizona’s August primary election.
A strong spirit of disgust with national Republican leadership, often noted around the nation, made itself felt here.
The woman considered to be McCain’s main GOP primary opponent, physician Kelli Ward, told the party activists here in mid-January, “Just like you, I am fed up. . . . We have got to take this country down the right path….We have got to take a sharp right turn. . . .
“I have to tell you, like many of you out there, that I am disappointed in our party,” which has “squandered” its leadership position, Ward said.
Among various points, she denounced surrendering to Barack Obama and called for defunding Planned Parenthood.
As well as being a physician in western Arizona, next to the California border, Ward had been an Arizona state senator until she resigned that position in December to focus on the race against McCain.
Ward was greeted with a standing ovation at the Central Avenue auditorium. She concluded her remarks to approving audience screams and an even larger standing ovation.
As is usually the case, McCain didn’t speak in front of this GOP assembly, although he sent a representative, who received some booing, to make a brief re-election appeal on his behalf.
Slightly more than 1,000 precinct committeemen attended the Maricopa County meeting, bringing nearly 1,000 proxy votes along with them.
Maricopa, whose county seat is Phoenix, is by far the most populous of Arizona’s 15 counties, and is among the nation’s largest in area and population, with more than 4 million residents. Total population in Arizona is headed toward 7 million people, represented by nine members in the U.S. House.
Three of Arizona’s conservative GOP congressmen who represent different portions of Maricopa County spoke at the gathering. Each rejected the kind of establishment passivity that McCain is regarded as symbolizing, although they didn’t call for ousting McCain.
Cong. Trent Franks said that if the nation doesn’t elect a good president this November, “I am very concerned about the survival as a republic of the United States of America.”
Franks began by wishing that every county had Maricopa County’s kind of electorate, which votes into office congressmen who join the U.S. House’s activist conservative Freedom Caucus.
Cong. Matt Salmon drew substantial applause when he said, “If we’re going to fix this country, we have to fix first the Republican Party.” He added later that the GOP has to stop being the party of the Chamber of Commerce.
Salmon said he doesn’t want to hear national GOP leaders claiming that people are upset because the GOP isn’t working with Democrats to get things done. “I didn’t come (to Congress) ‘to get stuff done’,” Salmon exclaimed. “I came to get stuff undone.”
He also rejected having to listen to claims that the borders need to be open in order to fill the jobs that Americans won’t take. If that’s a problem, then cut back U.S. welfare programs so people already in America have to take those jobs, Salmon said.
Cong. David Schweikert noted that conservative congressmen are under fire from various sides, including the Chamber of Commerce vowing to spend $100 million to defeat them in elections.
Schweikert told the meeting that the U.S. House “is going to do hard things” in the next few months, “and the media is going to try to rip our heads off. . . . We’re going to need you to hang tough with us.”
Rob Haney, a retired chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party and longtime opponent of McCain, was among those pushing for the “Anyone But McCain” resolution at the gathering.
Haney told The Wanderer that the daylong meeting “was packed with McCain operatives who tried to void, table, and challenge any votes that might prove embarrassing to McCain. They failed miserably at every turn, except to delay the inevitable until 7:30 p.m.”
The McCain forces also failed to retain two of his supporters as county party officials, and failed to oust the current county chairman opposed by McCain, Haney said.
Two Januarys ago, some Arizona county GOP precinct committeemen including Maricopa’s, as well as Arizona state committeemen, censured McCain for being untrue to the Republican Party platform.
This year’s “Anyone But McCain” resolution said that after the 2014 rebuke, “we have hoped Sen. McCain would return to our party’s values. He has not. With sadness and humility we rise and declare our beliefs.”
The resolution went on to list grievances against McCain, including his working against Arizona grassroots conservatives and voting for funding for Obama’s amnesty for illegal aliens and Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, Obamacare, and Planned Parenthood, which sells aborted baby body parts.
Arpaio Won’t Surrender
Among the morning’s speakers, popular Maricopa County Republican Sheriff Joe Arpaio received a standing ovation and went on to note that he has sued Obama over illegal immigration.
Arpaio thanked GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump for raising the illegal-immigration issue, forcing other candidates to speak about it.
The sheriff’s office turned 5,000 of its illegal-alien inmates over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Arpaio said, but more than one-third of them keep coming back across the U.S. border.
Currently serving his sixth four-year term as sheriff, Arpaio, 83, said he’s running for office again, adding, “I’m not going to surrender.” He didn’t explain to whom he wasn’t surrendering, but that was pretty well understood — the forces of political correctness, open borders, and left-wing politics.
McCain, who turns 80 this year, might learn from Arpaio that it’s not simply age that voters count against long-serving politicians, but what they do with their years in office.
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