Veteran Arizona Reporter Chronicles McCain's Early Political Career

The Phoenix New Times’ Amy Silverman has a must-read piece this week about Sen. John McCain’s history in Arizona -- from a veteran Arizona reporter. It is a well-kept secret, at least outside of The Grand Canyon State, that McCain has a very different reputation -- and relationship with the press -- in his home state than he does nationally, and Silverman illustrates this beautifully. It’s hard to know where to even begin, the article contains so much information and so many anecdotes, but here’s an excerpt -- a revealing story about the events immediately following Arizona's Republican Gov. Evan Mecham's impeachment in 1988:

In Arizona, when a governor leaves office early, the secretary of state ascends. In this case, that was Rose Mofford, an old-school Democrat from the small mining town of Globe, a lady with a bright white beehive that Arizona Republic cartoonist Steve Benson once famously drew as a cone-full of Dairy Queen.

Mofford had served as secretary of state for decades. She'd never aspired to the state's top spot. But she accepted graciously and agreed to serve out the remaining 2 1/2 years of Mecham's term. She never showed interest in running for another term after that, although she was enormously popular.

As the story goes, John McCain and his friends wanted her out immediately. And, they figured, they had the mechanism in place to do it. Mecham was gone, but the recall effort was still in place. Why not shift gears and target Mofford instead?

The Democrats didn't like that one bit and asked the Arizona Supreme Court to consider the legality.

In mid-April 1988, Mofford and some staff flew to Washington for, as one former aide puts it, the "perfunctory wet kiss" meeting with the Arizona congressional delegation. Even in mean old D.C., there's such a thing as protocol, and the tour was expected to go along without incident.

At 10 in the morning on April 12, Mofford testified before the Senate Energy and Water Development Subcommittee on Appropriations on the topic of the Central Arizona Project.

Now, Mofford had been governor for only eight days. Before that, her main task had been running the state's elections department. This appearance (there was a similar one, later that day, before the House) had been billed as ceremonial. She was not familiar with the particulars of federal water law. Nor did her staff think she'd be expected to be — just then.

But, apparently, Sen. James McClure, a Republican from Idaho, did. After a lot of looking, that librarian and I (actually, it took three librarians) tracked down the testimony from that day. McClure asked Mofford a series of questions that would leave any water expert's mouth dry. Her staff jumped in to try to answer, but even so, ultimately they had to file an addendum to the testimony...

Later that day, McCain had lunch with Pat Murphy, then the publisher of the Arizona Republic, the largest newspaper in the state -- and a former close friend of the senator. Here's his recollection of the lunch, from an email:

"During lunch, McCain said, almost with mischievous glee, that he had slipped some highly technical questions to [James McClure] to ask Mofford — questions she wouldn't be prepared to answer or expected to answer.

"Flabbergasted, I asked McCain why would he want to sabotage Mofford's testimony, when in fact the CAP was the nonpartisan pet of Republicans and Democrats — such as far-left Udall and far-right Goldwater — since its inception.

"His reply, as near as I remember, was, 'I'll embarrass a Democrat any time I get the chance.'

"The lunch continued in strained chit-chat. We then walked back to McCain's office, where a few reporters, all of them from Arizona papers, as I recall, were waiting. One said there was a rumor McCain had tried to sabotage Mofford's testimony, to which he said something like, 'I'd never do anything like that.'"

Silverman's piece is long, but it is fascinating and full of moments like this. She paints a picture of McCain before he branded himself as a bipartisan reformer. According to Silverman, before McCain hit the national stage, he was known for his short temper and a willingness to take petty shots for partisan gain. It is possible that he has since genuinely turned a new leaf, but insights into McCain's behavior when he was a little-known Western politician -- long before he ever ran for the White House -- may provide the American public with a glimpse of a candidate that they know primarily from hagiographic accounts from the national press.

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