If John McCain wins another term in the U.S. Senate, he won’t have any members of his own party in Arizona's largest county to thank for it.
It’s anyone but McCain for the Republican Party of Maricopa County, whose precinct committee members voted by more than 60 percent to support another candidate, no matter his opponent in the GOP primary this August.
Chairman Tyler Bowyer said in a statement that the senior senator's recent vote to increase the national debt while fully funding Planned Parenthood shows he is more aligned with President Obama than Arizona voters.
In his response, McCain called the action divisive and said it “does absolutely nothing to strengthen our party and merely alienates voters.”
It’s not the county GOP’s first rebuke of McCain. The group voted to censure him two years ago for what they felt was an insufficiently conservative voting record.
Kelli Ward, a Lake Havasu City physician, resigned her state Senate seat to run against McCain in the primary. Another potential challenger, Congressman David Schweikert, is not expected to run.
