Sen. John McCain gestures as he addresses a rally with supporters on Election Night in Phoenix.

It was inevitable that John McCain’s campaign would conjure comparisons with Barry Goldwater, the last, and until this year the only, Arizonan to win his party’s nomination for the presidency.
But even as polls showed the Republican senator trailing Barack Obama, McCain and his supporters kept hope alive that his campaign would not come to the same inglorious end.
Unfortunately for McCain, his fate was no better than Goldwater’s. Around 9:30 p.m. on Election Night, McCain stood before thousands of supporters at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa and announced that he was conceding the race to his Democratic rival.
“In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance,” McCain said of Obama, who is the first African-American to be elected president. “But that he managed to do by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.
“This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.”
Goldwater and McCain are not the only Arizonans to have eyed the White House. The late Rep. Morris “Mo” Udall, a longtime titan of Arizona politics, ran unsuccessfully against Jimmy Carter for the 1976 Democratic nomination, and former Gov. Bruce Babbitt sought the Democratic nomination in 1988.
At the time when Goldwater ran for president, modern American conservatism was in its infancy. Though he lost in a landslide to Lyndon Johnson — only Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina voted for Goldwater — his candidacy attracted legions of supporters. His philosophy of small government, fiscal restraint, strong national defense and opposition to the Soviet Union’s spread of communism around the world was summed up by his campaign slogan, “In your heart, you know he’s right.”
Goldwater is often credited with launching conservatism into the American political mainstream, and was long known by the nickname “Mr. Conservative.” His failed 1964 run paved the way for the epochal 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, whose presidency saw the rise of many prominent conservative politicians, including McCain.
Just as their respective campaigns shared the same outcome, McCain’s and Goldwater’s concession speeches shared similarities as well. As Goldwater recited a list of challenges facing the United States in 1964, including Vietnam, Cuba and the continued growth of communism in the world, he made a pledge to Johnson in his concession speech that “anything I can do — and I am sure I speak for all Americans — anything that we can do to help the president get along with the solution to these problems, we are ready, willing and able to do.”
Not every aspect of the two Arizonans’ campaigns was alike. Goldwater won his home state by a slim margin of slightly less than 1 percent. After a Cronkite/Eight poll released 10 days before the election showed McCain with just a 2-point lead in Arizona, some pundits, pollsters and hopeful Democrats wondered if he might have a similarly close fight on his hands in his home state.
But while myriad polls that showed Obama winning the election proved accurate, McCain won Arizona’s 10 electoral votes by a 9-point margin, a significantly better showing than the 0.99-percent win Goldwater eked out in 1964. Just hours before McCain gave his concession speech, U.S. Rep. John Shadegg, whose father, Stephen, was a campaign manager and adviser to Goldwater, told the crowd at the ballroom what he thought of that prediction.
“McCain will win Arizona without a shadow of a doubt. Any poll to the contrary is not a legitimate poll. He’ll win Arizona by a solid margin. I don’t think it was ever in doubt,” he said.
Voters such as Alan Sands helped McCain prove the naysayers wrong in Arizona. An Arizona State University alumnus who moved back to the state five years ago, Sands describes himself as an independent who was set to vote for Obama. But when the time came to put his pen to the ballot, Sands had a change of heart and cast his vote for McCain.
Even after voting for McCain, Sands could recite the litany of reasons he had planned to vote for Obama — dissatisfaction with the Republican White House of the past eight years; a belief that Obama could restore America’s damaged reputation in the world; and skepticism over some Republicans’ labeling of the Illinois senator as a socialist or “re-distributor of wealth.”
Sands said a big reason for his November surprise was a conversation he had the night before the election with a friend, who discussed with him McCain’s well-known struggles as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and the senator’s lifetime of service to the country.
“It just came down to looking at their two lives, and which life I think deserves the shot,” Sands said while sitting in the Biltmore courtyard, where McCain would give his concession speech about eight hours later. “I just see McCain as having more character.
In his concession speech, McCain thanked his wife Cindy for his support, along with the “many old and dear friends who have stood by my side through the many ups and downs of his long campaign.” Many of those friends, as well as some who had stood by him since his first congressional race in 1981, were in the crowd as McCain spoke.
Grant Woods, who served as Arizona’s attorney general from 1991-1999, worked on McCain’s first campaign, and became his first chief of staff in 1983. Woods was disappointed by McCain’s loss, but proud of the race he ran.
“The country got to see what a special person he is. We’re lucky here in Arizona that we’ve been able to be around someone of that caliber. There’s not too many men in our country’s history who have lived such a remarkable life, and I think the country finally realized that during this campaign,” Woods said the day after the election. “Even though he came up short, I think it was an honorable fight, and the country was well served by the race.”
Jerry Brooks, who helped manage McCain’s 1982 congressional campaign, said it has been interesting to watch a career that began with a recent arrival to Arizona, who had lived here for just one year, seeking his first elected office.
“When I first met him he was still a lot of that fighter-pilot kind of guy, (making) some of his wisecracks and things that didn’t go over well. Quite often he was digging himself out of a hole because of something he said, something flippant or so forth. I’ve seen him mature over the years,” Brooks said.
Jim Waring, who worked for McCain from 2000-2002, until he was elected to the state Senate, was impressed by McCain’s run. While the end result was a near 200-electoral-vote loss that included some surprising wins by Obama — McCain was the first Republican presidential candidate to lose Virginia since Goldwater, adding yet another sense of déjà vu to the McCain’s campaigns — Waring said McCain did well considering the plethora of factors working against him, including extremely low approval ratings for President Bush, an econom
ic crisis that many voters associated with the Republican Party, and the massive fundraising gap that emerged after Obama reneged on his earlier pledge to run his campaign with public financing.
“You saw a real uptick (for McCain) in the polls until about mid-September, and then the economic crisis hit,” Waring said. “It’s tough to be in the incumbent party. The president’s approval ratings, fair or not, are extremely low, and you’ve got people losing tons of money out of their 401Ks. And you’re going to get outspent by hundreds of millions of dollars. … This might be the worst Republican dynamic, certainly since Watergate, maybe since 1930 and the Great Depression.”
Despite the grim prognostications of the pollsters, spirits were high in the Biltmore’s Frank Lloyd Wright Ballroom, where more than 2,000 supporters celebrated their candidate for hours before the concession speech. A festive atmosphere prevailed as McCain supporters ate, drank and laughed, pausing to cheer when McCain’s early victories in Alabama, Arkansas and Georgia were announced.
The crowd heard performances from country music stars Hank Williams Jr. and John Rich, who referred onstage to McCain as an “American badass,” triggering thunderous applause.
Many were optimistic that McCain would have his “Dewey defeats Truman” moment and prove the polls wrong. Some were adamant that he would end the night as America’s president-elect.
One of those supporters was Scooter Clippard, national finance co-chairman for the McCain campaign.
“There ain’t no thinking about it. He will win,” said Clippard, who held a similar position in former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson’s primary campaign.
Others were hesitant to declare McCain the victor before the polls even closed, but still felt he had a chance.
“I think he’s got a good shot,” said Jack LaSota, who cast the first vote of his life for Goldwater in 1964. “A lot of things have to break just right, but I think they’re capable of breaking right.”
Not everyone shared in that optimism, tempered or otherwise. Jay Smith, who worked for every one of McCain’s campaigns from 1982 to 1998, said he was “not particularly” optimistic about McCain’s chances, though it was still emotional for him to see McCain lose.
Because of his experience in political campaigns, Brooks said he puts more stock in polls than most people do, which did not bode well for his hopes for a McCain presidency.
“I really thought if he did win it would’ve been Truman-esque, to say the least,” Brooks said.
As the results from the East Coast came in, Sen. Jon Kyl, McCain’s fellow Senate Republican, acknowledged to the crowd in the packed ballroom that McCain didn’t win some states that he’d hoped to win, but didn’t think that meant he couldn’t win.
“The truth of the matter is it’s uphill. But this campaign has always been uphill,” Kyl said. “As of right now, it’s too close to call.”
Within hours, though, the gap was wide enough for McCain to call Obama with congratulations, and the crowd migrated from the ballroom to the lawn, where McCain gave his concession speech. His wife Cindy stood to his left, while his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, and her husband Todd stood to his right.
As McCain announced that he was conceding the election, emotions were mixed in Cornville, the unincorporated community near Sedona where the senator and his wife maintain a part-time home. According to reports from the Cronkite News Service, some disappointed McCain fans had been entertaining visions of Cornville becoming the next Crawford, Texas, which gained fame as home to President Bush’s ranch, or Kennebunkport, Maine, which drew a great deal of attention as President George H.W. Bush’s home away from Washington.
At the Old Corral Bar in Cornville, some residents raised their glasses to the “next Western White House” while waiting for the election results to come in. Others, however, audibly groaned when early ballot counts showed McCain leading in swing states such as Virginia, and were pleased that the small Verde Valley town would escape the bright lights and media attention showered on those places, the Cronkite News Service reported.
Back at the Biltmore, emotions were mixed as well.
“There were a lot of people with very wet eyes,” Waring said.
Others were disappointed, but their eyes remained dry after the concession. Many seemed to have anticipated the outcome, and hundreds of people continued to talk and socialize on the Biltmore lawn after the speech ended. McCain’s concession speech, which received rave reviews from supporters and opponents alike, was a popular topic of conversation.
“I thought it hit all the right notes. John’s a first-class guy, and first and foremost he’s all about service to country, and that means that you run hard, try your best,” Woods said,
Gilbert resident Adam Ronalds was one of numerous supporters who described McCain’s concession speech as classy.
“You take it in stride, right? I think it’s pretty exciting to be in a time where no one could argue that our country has broken through a barrier of prejudice. I think that’s good,” Ronalds said.
Ronalds may have been pleased about what the election of a black man says about America, but that didn’t change the reservations about what kind of president Obama might be. He wasn’t alone.
“I believe in a moderate sized government, not large government, and I think the direction Barack wants to take America is definitely big government,” said Gilbert resident Jeff Kauk. Kauk said he is a Democrat who switched sides to back McCain this year.
Andy Kunasek, who won re-election to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors earlier in the night, was one of many Republicans who left the Biltmore worried about what the Obama presidency could mean for America.
“I’m very concerned. I hope Barack proves us all wrong on what our deepest fears are of a Barack administration. I wish him the best,” Kunasek said while standing on the emptying Biltmore lawn after the concession speech.
McCain told his supporters that the failure was his, not theirs, and remarked late in his concession speech that he did not know what more he could have done. At least one person in the crowd, who responded with a yell of “Reverend Wright!” disagreed. In the run-up to the election, some Republicans lamented that McCain did not talk about Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s controversial former reverend of 20 years whose sermons were often filled with harshly anti-American rhetoric, and even Palin complained that the issue should have been given more attention by the campaign.
McCain’s 9-point win in Arizona wasn’t the only good news for Republicans in the state. While Democrats seized the day nationwide with Obama’s win and pickups in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, Republicans gained seats on both sides of the Legislature, crushing the Democrats’ hopes of taking the majority in the state House of Representatives for the first time in more than 40 years. Shadegg also earned a blowout victory in Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District, where many people expected a tight race with Democratic challenger Bob Lord.
Waring, who cruised to re-election, said the local election results in Arizona likely left Democratic donors with a lot of questions.
“If you were the executive director of that party, or the independent expenditure folks, I don’t know what you tell those people today,” Waring said. “‘What did you do with our money?’ might be a fair question, and ‘How did we get this result?’”
Kunasek sa
id there could be another silver lining for Arizona Republicans. Speculation has been rampant about what kind of Cabinet position Obama might offer to Gov. Janet Napolitano, who backed him during his contentious primary with Sen. Hillary Clinton and was named on Nov. 5 to Obama’s White House transition team. Kunasek suggested that the state, which is facing a shortfall in the current budget of more than $1 billion, would be better off if Napolitano took a Cabinet position and left governorship to Republican Secretary of State Jan Brewer.
“I very frankly believe that Governor Napolitano has nearly bankrupted this state. If there’s some silver lining that she is swept out of this state, I think that’s a good thing for the well-being of this state, for the fiscal stability of this state, if she’s gone,” Kunasek said.
And McCain’s career is not over either. While he has not yet said whether he plans to run for re-election in 2010, many of his supporters envision a major role for him over the next two years, despite the fact that in January the Democrats will control the White House and both houses of Congress.
“I think he’s going to be the sage of the Senate. I look for him to work hard and, as he said last night, reunite everybody and get us back in a more functional form,” said Brooks, whose support of McCain goes back to the 1980s.
Udall, who titled his autobiography “Too Funny to be President,” once joked that Arizona is the only state in America where mothers don’t tell their children that they can grow up to be president, a line that Napolitano borrowed at this year’s Democratic National Convention in Denver. After a failed run for the Republican nomination against George W. Bush in 2000, and his subsequent 2008 campaign, McCain might tend to agree with Udall’s famous quip.
But even in defeat, many of McCain’s supporters were tremendously proud of him. Though none of them were able to achieve their ultimate goal, Woods still thinks Arizona can take pride in Goldwater, Udall, Babbitt and McCain, its pantheon of losing presidential candidates.
“The joke is that you can’t win from Arizona, but having said that, look at the people who have run from Arizona. They were all truly outstanding people who reflected well upon our state,” he said. “Some of the people who run for president, they’re kind of goofballs, but we’ve run only outstanding people.
“We haven’t won yet, but our day will come.”