Get ready to vote for U.S. Senator

Sen. John McCain is in one of the toughest political races of his career.

Arizona’s senior senator, seeking his sixth term, finds himself in a convergence of political trouble. He’s facing a well-known Democratic congresswoman in Ann Kirkpatrick, and a controversial Republican presidential candidate who has shown disdain for McCain and tea party Republicans in the state are undermining him politically.

The race was once considered to be a toss-up, but recent polls offer conflicting narratives on how close the race truly is.

A recent NBC/Marist poll has the 2008 presidential candidate beating Kirkpatrick by 19 points. An older poll released last month from Public Policy Polling had McCain and Kirkpatrick in a statistical dead heat.

The race has attracted a lot of attention from outside groups, which have poured more than $5.9 million into the race, according to The Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that advocates for transparency and public access to government data. About $2.7 million was spent in the Republican primary on ads attacking McCain’s opponent, former state Sen. Kelli Ward.

Additionally, both McCain and Kirkpatrick have individually raised millions of dollars and have begun spending money on television ads.

Kirkpatrick’s ties to Arizona

Standing in the lobby of La Estrella Bakery before a tour of the business recently, Kirkpatrick told the owner about the tiny store her father owned in Whiteriver. Her family has deep ties to Northern Arizona: Her dad’s family were merchants in the White Mountains, while her mother’s family had a ranch in Snowflake.

Before being elected to Congress in 2008, Kirkpatrick represented Flagstaff and the Navajo Nation as a state representative. Before that, she worked as an attorney. In 1980, she was Coconino County’s deputy county attorney.

The 66-year-old congresswoman briefly helped make — and eat — tortillas at La Estrella. She spoke to locals who lined up to buy empanadas and other pastries as well as the fresh tortillas. Many didn’t seem to know who Kirkpatrick was, nor that she was running against McCain.

Kirkpatrick has been criticized for her support for the Affordable Care Act, but the Flagstaff Democrat isn’t backing away from the issue.

She believes that some of the issues with the system, including problems with finding companies willing to provide health insurance in rural areas, have become political. For example, AETNA’s decision to leave the ACA marketplace briefly left Pinal County residents without an option to buy subsidized health insurance.

She contends AETNA officials left the marketplace because they wanted to hold federal officials hostage.

“AETNA’s situation is vindictive. They are getting revenge on the Department of Justice who wouldn’t approve their merger with Humana,” she said. “They are hurting real families who depend on their medical care.

“Insurance companies are making record profit, including health-insurance companies,” she said.

But she concedes that the Affordable Care Act still needs work.

“Even from the very beginning, I’ve said, ‘We’d need a revision,’” Kirkpatrick said.

The top priorities for Kirkpatrick are building a world-class educational system and comprehensive immigration reform.

For Southern Arizona, the lack of immigration reform is hurting the economy. And the proposal for a larger border wall is bad for local businesses, she says.

“Arizona last year did $31 billion dollars worth of business with Mexico,” she said, standing in the back of the bakery, motioning to the customers. “People tell me that Trump’s idea of deporting 12 million people, that is personal to them.”

Kirkpatrick blames elected Republicans, specifically, House Speaker Paul Ryan, for gridlock on immigration reform.

Many fronts

McCain is well-known and is fighting battles on many fronts.

On a recent trip to his midtown Tucson election headquarters, the 80-year-old McCain rattles off percentages, figures and statistics as he discusses hot-button topics.

For example, McCain notes a Gallup poll found 29 percent of Americans report that the Affordable Care Act has hurt them financially.

“My opponent said it was one of her more important votes,” McCain says.

The issue in finding health-insurance providers in the ACA marketplace in Pinal County is one of the many examples McCain cites as the broken promises of the federal health-care initiative.

“I know that when we are down to one that this is a complete contradiction to the promises that were made,” McCain says. And he says he has heard numerous “horror stories” from supporters.

Jobs are also a top concern for McCain, although he believes the Obama administration has largely avoided Congress by passing mandates through executive action or by setting new regulations with federal agencies.

The Navajo coal generation plant, for example, is threatened by new standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

“It is going to have devastating effect on Northern Arizona,” McCain notes.

He offers himself as a check on presidential power, noting President Obama said two years ago he would use his office to enact legislation.

“He said, ‘I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone,’” McCain said.

If Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is elected, McCain predicts she will push for more regulations that will hinder businesses.

“If you talk to any small businessperson in Pima County, they will tell you that government regulations are choking them. That and taxes,” McCain said.

McCain also said Congress needs to address illegal immigration, noting his role in the “Gang of Eight” backed plan that cleared the Senate, but not the House.

Most importantly, the plan would have provided a legal pathway for undocumented immigrants.

“There are 11 million people living here illegally,” he said. “That is an unsustainable situation.”

McCain still supports the plan, but says it will require a lot of work for each person before they can become a citizen.

At the end of Monday night’s candidate debate, Arizona Sen. John McCain reprised themes of honor and duty that have been the touchstones of his career.

“I’ve been blessed to be able to serve this nation and Arizona in the most noble fashion,” he intoned after Democratic challenger Ann Kirkpatrick’s closing statement. “I believe serving a cause greater than one’s self-interest is the noblest of all things one can do.”

This comment wasn’t surprising coming from the man who spent 5½ years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and wrote a 2008 book called “Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life.” But there was a whiff of hypocrisy in the statement, considering McCain had just, finally, said he won’t vote for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Drawing on his own military experience, McCain has long made what feels like a classically masculine appeal to behave courageously and with honor. The argument isn’t strictly for men, but it probably appeals more to the traditionally male mind and draws on the largely male customs of the military.

The problem is, when McCain’s traditional, honor-bound masculinity came up against Trump’s cartoonish alpha-male posturing, McCain did not take the brave route. He waited till the coast was clear in his re-election bid, then announced he would not vote for Trump.

You can look at the McCain vs. Trump conflict as a competition between different versions of proud masculinity: selfless vs. selfish.

The comment Trump made in 2005, and revealed Oct. 7 by the Washington Post, is in keeping with the character of the man Trump has presented during his career and this campaign. In fact, it’s a logical extension.

His appeal is built on the idea that we need a man — a “real leader” — who doesn’t care about social niceties and pursues his own and the country’s interests ruthlessly. Last week, Eric Trump explained his father’s comments on grabbing women by saying he is an “alpha personality.”

That’s certainly what Donald Trump is trying to communicate. Remember how he said that avoiding paying income taxes “makes me smart”? How about when he called Jeb Bush “low-energy”? And when he mocked Marco Rubio for sweating on a debate stage?

“When we get in with Putin we need people that don’t sweat,” Trump said. “Can you imagine Putin sitting there and waiting for the meeting and this guy walks in and he’s like a wreck? No, you got to have Trump walk into that meeting, folks. We’ll do very nicely.”

It was all about establishing Trump as the ruthless male in the pack. And it was no coincidence that Trump and supporters pointed to Putin as a model to emulate. Putin is, of course, a ruthless killer of opponents whom vice presidential nominee Mike Pence hailed as a “strong leader.”

If you read Peter Pomerantsev’s 2014 book, “Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia,” you come away with the sense that cold sociopathy is the male ideal promoted in Putin’s Russia.

That is not, of course, the masculine ideal McCain has promoted throughout his career. He advocates selfless courage, not selfish ruthlessness.

Now, granted, it is fair that McCain has wanted to support his party’s candidate for president, since he’s a leader of the party and received its presidential nomination in 2008. But think about the transgressions he was able to overlook before deciding he’d had enough:

• Trump saying in July 2015 that McCain and, by logical extension, other prisoners of war are “not war heroes” because they were captured.

• Trump proposing in December 2015 to ban all Muslims from entering the United States.

• Trump’s attacks in June on a federal judge overseeing a civil case against Trump because the Indiana-born judge is of Mexican descent.

• Trump’s insults in July against the parents of Humayun Khan, a U.S. soldier killed in combat in Iraq whose father spoke at the Democratic National Convention, condemning Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims as unconstitutional.

This was a particularly potent moment for McCain. Khan’s father, Khizr Khan, said McCain was a family hero. Khan had sent McCain’s book to his son on duty in Iraq. Khan implored McCain to abandon Trump, but the senator didn’t show the family the bravery that they believed he had. Instead he issued a strongly worded statement:

“It is time for Donald Trump to set the example for our country and the future of the Republican Party. While our party has bestowed upon him the nomination, it is not accompanied by unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us.”

Why would he keep supporting Trump even then, even when his Republican colleague, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, had stood up to Trump?

Consider the state of McCain’s race when these incidents occurred. Up until Aug. 30, 2016, McCain was still facing a primary challenge by Kelli Ward. Rejecting Trump outright could have pushed more Republican primary voters into Ward’s camp.

Even before the primary, pollsters were checking the state of the expected general-election race between Kirkpatrick and McCain and found it close.

When Trump attacked Curiel for his Mexican heritage in early June, the Real Clear Politics’ average of polls on the race showed him with a 2.4 percentage-point lead over Kirkpatrick. When Trump attacked the Khan family in August, the polling average showed McCain had a 5.5 percentage-point lead.

Then McCain won the primary and opened up a substantial lead in the polls. On Oct. 7, when the world heard Trump had say that stars like him can get away with grabbing women’s genitals, McCain’s average lead was 16 points. Courage was now an option.

At the debate, McCain explained what finally turned him: “When Mr. Trump attacks women and demeans the women in our nation and in our society, that’s a point where I just have to part company.”

But if he were being more upright he would probably have said, “Now that I’ve got an insurmountable lead, I’m content to part with Trump.”

The episode was a missed opportunity for McCain to display the values he extols — to show what a selfless, courageous man does when faced with a selfish, ruthless one.

MADISON, Wis. — A pledge scrawled on Russ Feingold's garage door and featured in a quirky 1992 Senate ad assured Wisconsin residents that he would rely on them — not wealthy out-of-state donors — to bankroll his campaign.

Once the Wisconsin Democrat got to Washington he joined forces with Arizona Republican John McCain on efforts to deflate the influence of special interest money, passing a seminal campaign finance reform law that bears both senators' names.

But now, with McCain facing a tougher-than-expected re-election and Feingold seeking to win back the seat he lost six years ago, the authors of McCain-Feingold are benefiting from the same sources of funding they once scorned.

The goal of their 2002 law was to shore up confidence in the political system and reduce the role of big money in elections. But it also allowed people and corporations to give their money elsewhere, to independent and third-party groups. Critics have argued that increased the power of those groups, weakening the role of political parties.

Feingold no longer abides by his 1992 garage door promise and doesn't spurn outside money to help his campaign. He defends his position as necessary in the wake of the landmark Citizens United Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that gave a green light for corporations, labor unions and other outside groups to spend unlimited cash on campaign ads as long as those activities aren't coordination with a candidate or party.

"(Citizens United has) completely changed the landscape," Feingold said during a campaign stop in late September. "And we're hoping we can overturn that decision and get back to some common sense. I don't want the outside groups. I never have. ... They have a right to do it, unfortunately."

Feingold's opponent, Sen. Ron Johnson, has branded him a hypocrite over the issue.

McCain declined repeated requests for comment. But longtime McCain backer Chuck Coughlin defended the senator's use of super PAC spending while saying he believes the current system is undermining democracy.

"The defense of what he's doing right now is he's using the law that is available to him that has evolved since the Citizen's United decision," said Coughlin, a Republican political consultant who worked for McCain in the 1980s. "It's my hope as a long-time McCain supporter and a loyal supporter that he will look at the wreckage of this landscape that's around us and choose to address it through reform."

Feingold almost lost his first re-election in 1998 because he refused to allow his campaign or any other allies to accept "soft money" to counter the millions that came in for his opponent. In 2010 Feingold found himself being challenged by Ron Johnson, a businessman with no prior political experience who was emboldened by the tea party movement. Feingold stood by his refusal to accept outside money, a spigot that Johnson was more than happy to turn on.

Independent groups spent about $3 million on the race, the vast majority of it going to help propel Johnson to victory.

This time Feingold proposed a "Badger Pledge" designed to blunt the impact of outside money. It was nearly identical to one Democrat Elizabeth Warren and Republican Scott Brown agreed to in Massachusetts' U.S. Senate race in 2012.

Johnson has refused to sign it.

Outside groups are spending heavily in the race, with $6.5 million coming in by early October. Of that, $1.2 million was benefiting Feingold and almost $6.3 million has gone to help Johnson.

Outside money also is pouring in for McCain, thanks mostly to $3.7 million from his own super PAC and $1.5 million from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The $5.4 million McCain has gotten from outside groups far outpaces the roughly $900,000 that have gone to help his opponents, a former Republican state senator McCain beat in the primary and his general election opponent Democratic U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick.

Kelli Ward, who lost to McCain in the primary, said the super PAC spending is "an example of establishment elitist political hypocrisy that we see on both sides of the aisle at every level of government."

"The people who are in control like to make rules for the people they want to control but not for themselves," Ward said.

While Feingold's shifts on campaign finance is disappointing, it's equally disheartening that Johnson has not disavowed outside money, said Jack Heck, director of the government watchdog group Common Cause of Wisconsin.

"I'm more disappointed that the system has changed so dramatically," Heck said.

PHOENIX — Incumbent John McCain found himself on the defensive Monday over the fact it took months for him to conclude that Donald Trump is not fit to be president.

During a televised debate, McCain made his case for voters to give him another six years in the U.S. Senate, where he has served since 1986 following four years in the House.

Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, the Democrat nominee, is trying to use McCain’s tenure to argue that the 80-year-old senator has been in Washington too long and is out of touch with constituents. McCain also has been buffeted by charges that some of his positions appear to morph over time.

But during the hour-long debate, McCain insisted that he is the same person that Arizonans sent to Washington.

“I will continue to be known as the ‘maverick,’” he said. “I will continue to fight with my own Republican Party when necessary.”

“There was a time when John McCain was a maverick,” Kirkpatrick countered.

“Now he has taken more money from Wall Street than any other sitting senator.”

Kirkpatrick said that, regardless of McCain’s reputation, it’s time for him to retire. She proposed term limits of three two-year terms in the House and two six-year terms in the Senate.

McCain responded, “The voters determine term limits.”

McCain, for his part, sought to paint Kirkpatrick with the controversy over the deaths of four U.S. diplomats at Benghazi when the embassy there was attacked in 2012. McCain acknowledged that Kirkpatrick had no role. “I don’t associate her with Benghazi,” he said. “I associate her with Hillary Clinton.”

McCain repeated charges by Republicans that Clinton was responsible for failing to respond to requests for help. “There has been a cover-up the likes of which I have not seen,” he said.

But McCain found himself under stiff questioning about his backing of Trump. That support continued through personal insults like Trump calling McCain a “loser” for getting captured during the Vietnam war, through Trump insulting the parents of a Muslim soldier who died in Iraq and through Trump saying a judge of Mexican heritage had no right to hear a lawsuit against him over Trump University.

It took the revelation Friday of some 11-year-old comments Trump made, boasting of assaulting women and grabbing them, for McCain on Saturday to distance himself from the GOP presidential nominee. McCain said Monday he would write in the name of some conservative candidate, possibly Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

But McCain sidestepped questions of whether he would be comfortable with Trump’s “finger on the nuclear button.”

“I do not see a scenario where he would have his finger on the button,” McCain said. He conceded that he had previously backed Trump to be president, a position that would allow him to launch a nuclear attack. “I was supporting the nominee of the party,” McCain said of why it took so long to dump Trump.

McCain all but predicted that Trump will lose in November. He said that it’s important for Republicans to maintain control of the Senate if Clinton is elected, particularly to block her appointments, including filling the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Related to that issue is the decision by federal courts to block the executive orders of President Obama to allow some immigrants who arrived here illegally to remain. McCain said the lower court judges got it right. “Barack Obama violated his oath of office,” he said.

Kirkpatrick countered that legal issues would be resolved by the nation’s highest court if the Republican-controlled Senate would finally have hearings on Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland.

McCain, for his part, has focused on Kirkpatrick’s support for the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, even as the program is faced with fewer options for those eligible and sharply rising premiums.

Kirkpatrick acknowledged problems with the plan, but said it can be fixed. The Affordable Care Act has meant that people cannot be denied coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions, she said.

“It is based on a flawed premise,” McCain responded, saying it has to be scrapped and Congress needs to start over.

Kirkpatrick is not being helped in her campaign by the fact that Arizona has been particularly hard hit by problems with the Affordable Care Act.

At one point earlier this year, it appeared that Pinal County, in the heart of her congressional district, would become the only county in the entire country to have no providers at all.

That has since been remedied with a decision by Blue Cross to write policies, though the costs have yet to be unveiled. But 14 of the state’s 15 counties will still have only one Obamacare provider.

Most polls have shown McCain with an edge over Kirkpatrick, a three-term member of the House. That reflects, at least part, the edge Republicans have in voter registration.

Kirkpatrick also has relatively low name recognition and has been unable to raise as much money as McCain.

The most recent campaign finance reports show that McCain has raised $12.4 million this election cycle and still has more than $5 million on hand. Kirkpatrick, by contrast, listed total contributions of nearly $5.9 million but with less than $2.3 million in the bank.

McCain also has benefited from more than $1 million spent on his behalf by the Arizona Grassroots Action PAC, some of it used to help him defeat state Sen. Kelli Ward in the GOP primary.

Kirkpatrick foes have been airing a commercial with a video that shows her leaving a meeting of constituents in 2009 who were upset with her vote on the Affordable Care Act. She has responded by saying that she was urged to leave to avoid creating an unsafe situation.

John McCain brings a wealth of experience in foreign affairs and powerful seniority to his position as senator. After 30 years in the Senate, he’s developed perspective that comes from witnessing, from a front-row seat, American history being made.

In that time, Arizona has grown tremendously. McCain, who we have criticized from time to time for looking to the world stage rather than focusing more on state needs, says that his priorities for Arizona are “fire and water.”

McCain, 80, is running against Ann Kirkpatrick, a Democrat who has represented Congressional District 1 for two terms.

Kirkpatrick shares many of our priorities: college affordability; equal rights and protection against discrimination for Arizonans who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender; work permits and security against deportation for immigrant children, known as “Dreamers,” brought into the U.S. without proper documentation; and promoting trade and commerce with Mexico.

But when it comes to encyclopedic knowledge of a complicated world, McCain has the advantage. He chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee and has been so involved in American foreign policy that he brings a perspective others can’t.

He’s been in Washington long enough to have seen policy cycles, to watch as partisanship and ideology have taken deep root, particularly in his own party. “A lot has changed over the years,” he said. “I think it disillusions young people.”

We agree.

Yet we noticed something in interviews with Kirkpatrick and McCain — he uses “us” and “them” when referring to his Republican Party and to Democrats.

Kirkpatrick emphasized her bipartisan work with Republican Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar — they have teamed up on “common sense kind of things” that directly affect their constituents, as well as forest health and forest-fire prevention efforts. She has also broken with Democrats by voting against the Wall Street bailout, cap and trade, and the Dodd-Frank regulations on the financial industry.

McCain’s priority of “fire and water” for Arizona is wise. Wildfires have caused tremendous damage across the state in recent years.

“Our whole state is hostage to forest fires,” he said. He helped get Air Force planes transferred to help fight the blazes.

For water, McCain said it’s time to consider water reuse, although he acknowledges there’s a “psychological barrier” to doing so.

McCain said technology is key to developing solutions to potential water shortages and for border security.

He said he supports the comprehensive immigration reform package that came out of a bipartisan effort in 2013 nicknamed the “Gang of Eight.” The legislation, which stalled, would create a path to citizenship or legal residency for people in the country illegally and address business concerns by making it easier for immigrants to come to the U.S. to work in labor-intensive industries such as agriculture.

McCain also suggested that giving Border Patrol agents who work along the U.S.-Mexico border hardship pay, in part because of the extreme climate here. That could make the job more attractive, he said.