If it was close....

McCain scores decisive primary win

By Theodoric Meyer

In the end, it wasn’t even close.

Republican Sen. John McCain won an easy victory over his primary challenger on Tuesday in Arizona, defeating former state Sen. Kelli Ward — the most prominent anti-incumbent Senate primary challenger of 2016 — by a double-digit margin. McCain had 55 percent of the GOP vote to Ward's 35 percent when The Associated Press called the race soon after it started tallying the votes.

It was an anticlimactic victory for McCain, who was seen at the beginning of the election cycle as the Republican senator most vulnerable to a challenge from the right. A Public Policy Polling survey last year prompted intense speculation about McCain's future when it found 50 percent of Arizona GOP primary voters disapproving of his job performance.

But, in an early blow to her candidacy, Ward never earned the support of the conservative groups that had been involved in successful challenges to GOP senators like Indiana's Richard Lugar, and she struggled to compete against the better-financed McCain. Senate Conservatives Fund, which warned in a fundraising letter last year that McCain was “in real trouble,” didn’t endorse her. Neither did the Club for Growth, the best-funded conservative outside group.

"When we looked at the Arizona Senate race early on, we saw candidates like [GOP Reps.] Matt Salmon and David Schweikert could have a path to victory," Club for Growth President David McIntosh said.

But Salmon and Schweikert both declined to run, and the Club didn’t see a way for Ward to bring down McCain.

The Arizona senator’s allies, meanwhile, started maneuvering more than two years ago to ensure McCain defeated his primary opponent, no matter who it was. After the Arizona Republican Party censured McCain in 2014, McCain’s allies worked to purge the state party of potential troublemakers and replace them with McCain loyalists.

A super PAC backing McCain, Arizona Grassroots Action PAC, poured nearly $2.7 million into the primary. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent another $1.2 million.

“Regardless of opponent, this was always going to be a tough race,” said Jon Seaton, a GOP operative who worked on McCain’s presidential campaign eight years ago and took charge of Arizona Grassroots Action PAC with another McCain veteran, Christian Ferry. “It’s the reason we started laying the groundwork so early. A segment of the Arizona primary electorate opposes John McCain almost no matter who he’s running against.”

The super PAC gave McCain the cover to focus on his presumed general election opponent, Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick. While McCain started attacking her months ago, Arizona Grassroots Action delighted in calling attention to Ward’s affinity for conspiracy theories, mocking her for supporting “oddball bills” in a digital ad last year. The bulk of the super PAC’s TV ads were devoted to painting Ward as an unsteady voice on terrorism and national security — issues that happen to be strengths of McCain’s.

KelliPAC, a super PAC backing Ward, also hit the air this month after a late contribution from Robert Mercer, the conservative megadonor who spent millions backing Ted Cruz last year and is now supporting Donald Trump.

The ads momentarily put McCain on defense. The campaign quietly started airing TV ads attacking Ward last week.

But Ward’s campaign couldn’t catch up with McCain in the polls, and the incumbent's side had more resources in every aspect of the campaign, including a formidable field operation. Unusually for a super PAC, Arizona Grassroots Action made early investments in a primary-focused ground game, with about 50 staffers knocking on doors and making phone calls in the final weeks before the primary.

The race now shifts to the general election, where McCain is facing his stiffest challenge since he first won the seat three decades ago. Without a primary opponent, Kirkpatrick has been free to focus on stockpiling cash, although she still had less than half the $5 million in McCain’s campaign account.

Kirkpatrick has built her campaign around tying McCain to Donald Trump, arguing that voters can’t trust McCain to stand up for Arizona if he won’t even stand up to Trump’s repeated attacks on McCain himself. Polls have shown a close race, though a CNN poll released last week had the Arizona senator up 13 points.

McCain refused to allow Ward to outflank him on Trump during the primary, telling reporters over and over again that he would back Trump during the primary, even after he tore into the GOP nominee for insulting the parents of fallen Army Capt. Humayun Khan after Khan’s father spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

Some Republican operatives have speculated that McCain could join Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and other GOP senators in distancing himself from Trump after he’d dealt with Ward. But McCain ruled it out in an interview last week.

“There’s no reason to do that,” McCain told POLITICO. “They all know me. Everybody in Arizona really knows me unless they just moved in.”