A Comment on Dave Winer's blog has grown to this!

by francinehardaway on October 5, 2008

Some of my Arizona friends are ready to leave the country if McCain gets elected because of what they know about him, and this includes Democrats and Republicans who were leaders in the business community in the late 70s and 80’s when he came up. Most of them were CSR officers in their companies.

I was in the PR business during that time, and knew most of the stuff, but hadn’t remembered it until yesterday when I went to a birthday party for one of their grandkids and my friend Sharon, who at the time was the CSR officer for the largest local bank, reminded me that:
1)Mc Cain was chosen to be a candidate by Duke Tully, then the publisher of the Az Republic, a Pulliam newspaper that supported Kemper Marley, who had connections to organized crime and gave Cindy McCain’s father his opportunity for the Budweiser distributorship.
2)At the time, Phoenix was controlled by The Phoenix 40, a backroom group of men who ran the city and wanted more influence in Washington for things like water issues.
3)McCain was their tool. They didn’t care who he was or what he believed, but they believed they could get him elected because he was a war hero.
4)Soon after he married Cindy, stories began to come out about spousal abuse. Those stories, which circulated around the country clubs to which all these leaders belonged (myself included) were about how bad their marriage was, and the spousal abuse. John McCain was NEVER in Arizona, and when he was, Cindy didn’t like it. That is supposedly why she got addicted to pain killers; it was the bad marriage. They have basically never lived together for any length of time during the marriage.
5)the McCain’s gave Duke Tully a party for his retirement from the military. (Supposedly Tully was a fighter pilot, like McCain. McCain got him special privileges to fly F-16s at Luke AFB. I remember Duke telling me that over martinis at Avanti in Phoenix.)
My friend Sharon had to attend the retirement party as part of her job, although she already knew what it was soon going to emerge that Tully was never in the military.Two weeks later, all that came out, and Tully was forced to resign. Oooops, for John McCain, who always knew Tully wasn’t in the military but went along with the fiction because TUlly published the paper, which was in the tank for any Republican candidate.

That’s how Arizona worked back then. I’ll bet it’s how Alaska works now.

Enough. I’m going to put this on my own blog:-)

And, the Democrats know all this dirt, which has been repeatedly reprinted in New Times, Rolling Stone, etc, but they are not using it in the campaign because they are trying not to go to personal attacks. I wish they would. McCain in Arizona smiles at me when he sees me, but his office is totally unresponsive to anything from constituents. One time I wanted to start a program to teach veterans entrepreneurship skills and was looking for some contacts, and they couldn’t even find the time to help with that. On the other hand, John Kyl, also a conservative Republican, is a good man who serves the people. It’s not a party issue; it’s a character issue.

Update: I know people are going to ask me for sources on this post. I will refer you first to Pat Murphy, the man who succeeded Tully as publisher of the Arizona Republic, who is now retired and living in Idaho, or Bill Shover, who was the CSR person for the Republic during the same era. He is in Phoenix. Shover has already taked to NPR in a story I heard unexpectedly while driving down Highway 1 this summer. I am told Murphy has also talked to the press. Amy SIlverman from New Times has been covering this stuff for years, but you may dismiss New Times as “left.” You can’t dismiss Shover and Murphy as left, trust me. My friend Sharon Liese, who lives in Park City now and was the CSR person for Valley Bank while Shover was at the Republic, is also wanting to talk to the press. All these people are stunned that McCain could get this far.
Originally posted as a comment by hardaway on Scripting News using Disqus.

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