He might die in office...

McCain's opponent: He might die in office

The incumbent Republican, who's about to turn 80, says the attack is beyond the pale.

By Burgess Everett

John McCain's underdog opponent in next week's primary election is going there: Should he win, Kelli Ward told POLITICO flatly on Thursday, the soon-to-be 80-year-old senator may not live to finish out his six-year term.

“I’m a doctor. The life expectancy of the American male is not 86. It’s less,” Ward said in an interview here.

Age tends to be a delicate issue in campaigns, alluded to by rivals but rarely attacked head on. But Ward is ditching such niceties, drawing a contrast in the final days of her longshot campaign that could hardly be more blatant: She the relatively youthful 47-year-old challenger against, in her telling, the cranky old incumbent who's mentally and physically unfit for the demanding job of a U.S. senator.

Ward, a former state senator, insisted it's not a last-ditch attack to reverse her fortunes; polls show her trailing badly. Arizonans, she said, “have the right to know he’s an 80-year old man who’s been in Washington for more than 40 years” — a slight exaggeration of his 34 years in D.C.

On Wednesday McCain dismissed Ward’s tactics, which she's been pushing this week on Twitter, as a “dive to the bottom.” But he admitted that when he hears attacks on his age “you don’t like it.” He said the episode shows how far political discourse has sunk since he defended his then-rival for president, Barack Obama, from attacks in 2008 that he was a Muslim and endured criticism from conservatives.

“People are stunned that I said to the woman that Barack Obama is an honorable man in 2008. That was sort of the standard way you conducted yourself,” McCain said, recalling that recently Ward “issued a press release saying that I was a sexist or some damn thing.”

Ward is unbowed. Comparing McCain to an overworked physician, she said she worries that McCain could slip after serving so long because “when tired eyes look at problems, you have bad outcomes for the patient and the provider.” That could spell disaster for the state, Ward said.

“There are things that happen physiologically with the body and the mind. One of them is control over your anger and he’s already known as an angry man,” Ward said, munching on a baked potato at Durant’s, an old-school Phoenix steakhouse. “It becomes more and more difficult to control those kinds of outbursts. And we have to have someone with a steady hand, someone with the ability to think on their feet. Someone who can problem-solve.”

At another point in the interview, she referred to McCain as a dinosaur.

Ward began the attack on McCain’s age (he’s the eighth-oldest senator) by questioning whether a 79-year-old senator makes the country safer and retweeting a supporter who called Ward “young, capable, enthusiastic.” But her remarks in the interview on Wednesday marked the sharpest attack on a senator’s age since Chris McDaniel tried to bring down Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) two years ago in a Republican primary.

McCain won't even rule out that this is his last race should he win.

“I don’t know. It’s a six-year term. I don’t know. The last two or three I have treated as the last campaign because that’s a decision you would make some years from now. Frankly I haven't thought about it much," McCain said.

Ward said it is McCain and his deep-pocketed Super PAC that are lowering the political discourse in the Senate race. Arizona Grassroots Action has called Ward “Street Corner Kelli” while a McCain web ad called her “Chemtrail Kelli” for being open to investigating whether the government is spraying Americans from airplanes.

“He and his people have said I’m too conservative, I’m too liberal, I’m a racist, I’m a bigot. And even equating me to a prostitute, saying I’m 'Street Corner Kelli.' If that’s not scraping the bottom of the barrel, I don't know what is,” Ward said. “Pointing out a simple, biological, physiological fact that he’s turning 80 on Monday, that is 100 percent complete truth and the people deserve to know.”

Lorna Romero, a spokeswoman for McCain, said on Thursday that “the ‘chemtrails’ must be getting to Kelli Ward.”

If McCain defeats Ward in Tuesday’s primary, the age attacks are unlikely to continue. His presumptive Democratic opponent, Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.), is 66. And while she did not outwardly call on Ward to stop hitting McCain on his age, Kirkpatrick also indicated she’s unlikely to do so herself.

“I think it’s more an issue of his being out of touch with Arizona,” she said in an interview.

Still, Ward and Kirkpatrick agree that McCain has changed over the years, if for different reasons. Kirkpatrick thinks McCain has lost his independent streak, while Ward asserts that he’s his mental acuity is fading.

“He’s become pretty sour. A pretty sour old guy,” Ward said.

McCain has faced this scrutiny before, particularly in 2008 when the Associated Press wrote a story quoting actuaries who calculated he had a 25 percent chance of not surviving a second term as president.

McCain said the attacks from Ward will backfire with voters.

“It turns people off. I think it harms all of us when you have this level of personal attacks. I don't think it’s good for the political process,” McCain said with a shrug. “But it is what it is.”