Editor's Note:
Jon Talton is a fourth-generation Arizonian and former Arizona Republic columnist.
He blogs about Arizona politics and history at Rogue Columnist.
The opinions expressed in this column are yours.
See more opinion on CNN.
(CNN) -
It's tempting to say that President Donald Trump's defeat in Arizona is revenge for the late U.S. Senator John McCain.
As a candidate, Trump said of the Arizona senator, who spent five and a half years in the famous Vietnam prison nicknamed Hanoi Hilton: “He is not a war hero.
He was a war hero because he was captured.
I like people who were not caught.
In 2019, after the senator's death, Trump said, "I was never a John McCain fan and never will be."
McCain had returned the antipathy.
For example, when candidate Trump was caught on tape making obscene remarks about women, McCain said, "Donald Trump's behavior makes it impossible to continue giving even conditional support for his candidacy."
Before his death, McCain insisted that his eulogies be delivered by President George W. Bush and his 2008 opponent, President Barack Obama.
Trump was not invited to the funeral.
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The reality is that while McCain's ghost may be grinning at the karma that Trump lost Arizona, the dispute between McCain and Trump was only one factor.
While the senator was loved by many in Arizona, most notably for his heroism in Vietnam (Trump avoided the service on the grounds of bone spurs), many new residents to the state have little knowledge of him.
About half of the state's total population was added between the time McCain was first elected to the Senate in 1986 until his death, according to US Census Bureau data from 1980 and 2019. Additionally, many people came to the state every year, a significant number, even if the total continued to grow.
Arizona added 2.2 million residents from 2010 to 2018, while 1.7 million moved to other states.
In other words, this rotation may well have avoided the kind of civic attachment that would have left a large cohort of Arizonans who held a grudge against Trump for his treatment of McCain.
Many of these new Republican residents are likely to be ardent Trump supporters, as the subsequent downsizing of Joe Biden's leadership indicated.
Still, polls last month indicated that some might abandon the president for many of the reasons that the rest of the country that voted for Biden did, especially Trump's handling of the pandemic and his repeated lies.
But one great way McCain helped Biden was through McCain's wife Cindy McCain's endorsement of the Democratic nominee in September.
Originally from Arizona, heiress to a highly successful Phoenix beer distributor and philanthropist, Cindy McCain has a powerful influence in the state.
In a series of tweets, Cindy McCain wrote: “My husband John lived by one code: country first.
We are Republicans, yes, but first we are Americans.
There is only one candidate in this race who defends our values as a nation, and that is @JoeBiden.
And “Joe and I don't always agree on some issues, and I know he and John certainly had some passionate discussions, but he is a good and honest man.
He will guide us with dignity.
He will be a commander-in-chief on whom the best fighting force in world history can depend, because he knows what it is like to send a son to fight.
Biden also received the help of former state attorney general Grant Woods, a Republican and longtime friend of McCain.
McCain's daughter Meghan is also supportive of Biden and has a powerful platform as a television personality.
While the John McCain factor may not have been decisive in the Arizona vote, for some it probably resonated.
And it wasn't just personal history and vision of service that separated Trump from McCain.
It was also his behavior in the presidential campaign and the final defeat.
LEE
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Remember when McCain stopped a supporter in her tracks who claimed Obama was "an Arab"?
McCain interrupted her, shook his head and said, "He's a decent citizen, family man, with whom I have disagreements on fundamental issues…".
Trump was one of the first to question Obama's birthplace, repeatedly threatening Hillary Clinton with jail as her supporters chanted "Lock her up."
When McCain lost to Obama in 2008, he gave an elegant concession speech.
By contrast, Trump had no words of reprimand for his supporters, some armed, who rallied and chanted outside the elections department in Phoenix as vote counters worked inside last week.
And to make matters worse, when the electoral figures began to turn against him, Trump made inflammatory comments from the White House last Thursday falsely claiming that there was electoral fraud.
It was an amazing and virtually unprecedented act on the part of a president.
Was his defeat McCain's revenge?
Perhaps in some cosmic sense, if not in a way that can be directly attributed to our world.
Arizona
