The Revenge of Arizona’s McCain Republicans

Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Wikimedia Commons

Arizona was once a safe Republican state in presidential elections. Though pockets of Democrats existed — on Native American reservations in the north, in Hispanic neighborhoods in south Phoenix, and in left-leaning Tucson — the heart of the state in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and its ever-sprawling suburbs, was safely GOP. That changed in 2020 when Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Maricopa County since Harry Truman. Biden did it by making gains in and around prosperous Phoenix suburbs like Scottsdale.

Four years later, these suburbs are now ground zero for the whole election, potentially deciding not only the White House but also the Senate and the House of Representatives. In many ways, the voters there are no different than those well-educated professional suburbanites who have migrated to the left in the Trump era nationally. What makes this stretch of suburban Phoenix truly different from similar parts of the country is that this is only part of the country where large chunks of the traditional Republican voters have defected en masse.

The shorthand for these voters are John McCain Republicans: acolytes of the late Republican senator and 2008 GOP nominee who have forsaken not only Trump but much of the MAGA turn of the Republican Party under his leadership. Scorned by Kari Lake during her 2022 gubernatorial run (she told McCain Republicans by name to “get the hell out” during one rally), they may have delivered the margin of defeat in her narrow loss that year and may do so again in her Senate race against Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego in November.

McCain had a conflicted relationship with Trump. Infamously, Trump said McCain was not a war hero early in his 2016 presidential campaign because the naval aviator had been captured during the Vietnam War after his plane was shot down over Hanoi. McCain eventually endorsed Trump as the Republican nominee before backtracking in the aftermath of the Access Hollywood tape that October. After Trump took office, McCain torpedoed the Trump administration’s effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017 with his thumbs-down vote on the Senate floor. The relationship between the two men only worsened from there. After McCain died of a brain tumor in 2018, Trump was pointedly not invited to the memorial service and, in return, pushed back on lowering the American flag at the White House in McCain’s honor.

Kamala Harris has made an effort to court these voters. She appeared at a Republicans for Harris event in Scottsdale on Friday, and her campaign is targeting these voters with television ads as well. They’ve also rolled out a series of endorsements from Arizona Republicans including former senator Jeff Flake and McCain’s son Jimmy. The latter endorsement prompted Joe Wolf, a Democratic consultant in the state, to crow that “the most important McCain Republican of them all became a Democrat this year.” (McCain’s widow, Cindy, who is currently serving as head of the World Food Programme in Rome, has yet to endorse Harris after endorsing Biden in 2020; his daughter media personality Meghan McCain has refused to back either presidential candidate this year.)

Even in a state with as many newcomers as Arizona, there still is a residual influence of the former senator in the political culture. Amish Shah, the Democrat running against embattled Republican David Schweikert in the First Congressional District, emphasized the type of McCain-style moderation he thinks voters want. “John McCain brought a spirit of independence here, and our senator, Kyrsten Sinema, had somewhat of a similar message,” he said, “Arizonans are independent-minded; that sentiment is very much there when you’re speaking to the voters.” Shah, a state legislator who won a ferociously contested primary by devoting himself to doorknocking in the district, added “I’ve met many, many, many Republicans who said ‘My party has left me, I don’t like the turn that my own party has made, and I’m looking for a Democrat like you.’”

But whether they are willing to leave a Republican like Schweikert remains an open question. A longtime Republican politician in Arizona, first elected to Congress in the Tea Party wave of 2010, he is in some ways a throwback to the GOP of the past. It’s not that he isn’t conservative: Schweikert is a former member of the Freedom Caucus who regularly takes to the House floor to urge spending cuts and bemoan rising deficits, but he is a right-winger from a pre-Trump GOP who seems increasingly moderate only in comparison to an Arizona House delegation where two of his colleagues were subpoenaed by the January 6 Committee for their role in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

As one Republican political consultant who has worked in Arizona argued, “Schweikert has done well to survive even under tough circumstances. He has kept McCain folks in orbit and even when he was in the Freedom Caucus, he always did a pretty job of keeping the coalition together.”

The district has been slowly moving away from the Trump-era GOP. In 2022, Lake and an election denier running for secretary of State both lost (and if the district had existed in 2020, Donald Trump would’ve lost too). But Schweikert held on by less than 1 percent and Kimberly Yee, the incumbent Republican state treasurer, won comfortably. According to recent polls, this divide has carried over into 2024 with Lake lagging both Trump and Schweikert in the district. As the Republican consultant noted, Lake has not received any sort of pass for her election denial and attacks on McCain in the way that Trump has. “It’s still just toxic and her, an Arizonan, going after him in a personal way — it’s not something as easily forgotten.”

With Election Day just over three weeks away, it’s unclear what still remains acceptable for these voters and how much they have migrated. Leaked Republican internal polls saw Lake running well behind Trump statewide. A significant number of these Arizonans may decide to reject Trump a second time. It’s also possible that after 14 years in office, these “McCain Republicans” may choose to reject Schweikert as well.