Political Notebook: Anti-McCain primary votes loom large

More than 240,000 people voted against Sen. John McCain in the Republican primary that ended Tuesday.

Normally, you’d expect those Republican voters would swallow their disappointment, move on to the general election and vote for him.

This time? Maybe, maybe not. Some of those who gave Dr. Kelli Ward her 197,000 votes cannot imagine themselves voting for McCain, who is 80 and running for his sixth term. Another 46,000 or so voters went for Alex Meluskey and Clair Van Steenwyk.

And frankly, in some factions of the Arizona GOP, the feelings for McCain verge on hatred. Remember when the state party censured him in 2014 for being too liberal? Just listen to the phrasing of Ward’s own concession statement:

“After refusing to debate while running a slash and burn campaign devoid of actual ideas, I hope the senator can rest comfortably with his conscience as he continues to lecture others about civility. The Republican Party cannot win as a national party if we keep nominating unprincipled career politicians whose only objective is perpetual re-election.”

When asked by the Arizona Republic if she’d support McCain, Ward said, “We’ll see,” adding: “I’m not quite there yet.”

Karen Schutte, a strong Ward supporter in Tucson, said she hadn’t decided what to do.

“I think people are going to look hard at Ann Kirkpatrick,” she said. “Is she really a moderate? Where does she stand on the issues we care about?”

That’s not a unanimous opinion: Former state Sen. Al Melvin, a strong Ward supporter, told me Thursday, “I can’t see any Republican worth their name voting for the Democrat.”

Or as Republican strategist Jaime Molera put it to me: “I don’t see the majority of those folks saying in order to spite McCain I’ll vote for Kirkpatrick.”

Typically, Republicans line up, some of them unhappily, with McCain, said Fred Solop a professor in the department of politics and international affairs at Northern Arizona University.

Kirkpatrick will not have an easy time beating McCain. His campaign had about $5 million on hand as of early August, compared to the Kirkpatrick campaign’s $2.3 million. The polls have been wildly variable, ranging in recent days from a 13-point lead for McCain to in a poll that came out Thursday, a 43-43 tie.

If this year’s general-election turnout equals the 74 percent of the 2012 turnout, there will be about 2.5 million votes cast in Arizona. Those 240,000 who went against McCain in the primary are almost a tenth of the expected total. If it’s close, they could be the difference, for him or against.

Back to bullets

Who in the Arizona GOP thought this was a good idea? The party delivered to Democrat Kirkpatrick’s campaign office Thursday a “Wanted” poster with her picture on it, calling her an “absentee” and saying she was last seen “running from constituents who want to hold her accountable.”

Kind of gimmicky, but fine so far.

The problem: The poster has five or six bullet holes designed into it. Yes, bullet holes. One of them is just below the picture of Kirkpatrick, about where her chest would be if the photo extended that far.

That is shocking and beyond the pale, especially in a state where a sitting congresswoman was shot just a few years ago. Our politics are angry and at times violent enough without the political parties encouraging it.

Young Dems fall

Southern Arizona Democrats had three hard-fought primaries for state House: In LD 2, LD 9 and LD 10 there were three candidates for two Dem nominations.

You know who lost in each case? The youngest candidate.

In LD 10, Courtney Frogge, 34, was the odd woman out in her race against incumbent Stefanie Mach, 36, and newcomer Kristen Engle, 54.

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In LD 9, incumbency did not protect Matt Kopec, 27, from his elders. Kopec, who was appointed by the Pima County Board of Supervisors to replace Victoria Steele, lost to incumbent Randy Friese, 52, and challenger Pamela Powers Hannley, 65.

In LD 2, UA law student Aaron Baumann, 25, lost to Sunnyside School Board member Daniel Hernandez, 26, and incumbent Rosanna Gabaldon, 56.

Coincidence? Could be, but my guess is that primary voters tend to be older and value experience.

“O’Who-lleran” vs. Babeu

When it comes to the race for Congress in District 1, the challenge for Democrat Tom O’Halleran is pretty clear: Tell the district’s voters who he is.

Thanks to the Republican candidate’s high media profile, the voters know who Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu is, for better or worse.

The district is huge, of course: It goes from Sedona, where O’Halleran lives, through Flagstaff, the Navajo Nation, the White Mountains all the way down to Pinal County, where Babeu lives, Marana and Oro Valley. Like I said, huge.

O’Halleran is known up in Northern Arizona, which he represented in the Legislature. But the southern part of the district is where most of the voters are, and it’s where he’s unknown.

“We’ll have a very aggressive outreach program starting now,” he said.

He’d better.

Of course, the campaign in this evenly divided district will be mostly fought between the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The Democrats will help O’Halleran by hitting Babeu with his baggage.

What will they use? Well, from talking to O’Halleran and seeing the DCCC’s first ad, it appears they will steer away from Babeu’s personal life, which drove him out of his last congressional campaign. However, they’ll criticize him for being the administrator at a Massachusetts private school where child abuse occurred.

“To me that disqualifies him from being a member of Congress,” O’Halleran said.

Babeu’s campaign has said he wasn’t in charge of the discipline at the school that the state classified as abuse.

Trump attendees split

Initially the speech by Donald Trump in Phoenix on Wednesday night was billed as an immigration policy speech, then a unity rally, then an illegal-immigration speech again.

Whatever the case, U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, the Tucson Republican, was never going to attend. She told my colleague Joe Ferguson and me Wednesday morning, “My schedule is booked.”

McSally has never endorsed Trump and is not going to, it seems. She said she’ll keep her vote secret. Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, both Republicans, also stayed away from the rally.

Gov. Doug Ducey, on the other hand, took the opportunity to give Trump his first full-throated endorsement.

“Tonight is about unity and coming together in the march to victory,” he said, adding later: “We need to elect a Trump-Pence ticket this November!”

Several speakers later, Trump came on and gave a shockingly dark and divisive speech about illegal immigration. No, it definitely was not a unity rally — not even among Arizona Republicans.