US election: Donald Trump’s disrespect for John McCain blamed for tight Arizona race

Arizona may seal the fate of Donald Trump after Joe Biden received a boost from the widow of former Republican nominee John McCain.

John and Cindy McCain. The widow of the former Republican presidential appeared at Arizona rallies for Joe Biden and was the star of a television ad encouraging conservatives to vote for the Democrat contender. Picture: AP

Arizona may seal the fate of Don­ald Trump, with Joe Biden winning the traditionally red state and getting a boost from the widow of former Republican nominee John McCain.

As of Thursday evening, Mr Biden was leading the Arizona count by more than 79,000 votes but Mr Trump had made significant gains in late ballots and might yet pull off a surprise win.

But Arizona has voted only for Republican presidents since 1996 —– and before Bill Clinton won that year, Democrats had not grabbed the state since 1952 — and some analysts like GOP strategist Mike Murphy have placed Mr Trump’s woes with his treatment of John McCain, one of his greatest political enemies.

Mr Trump during the 2016 presidential election disparaged McCain’s record as a war hero and mocked his capture by Vietcong forces in the Vietnam War.

“I like people who aren’t captured,” Mr Trump said at the time.

McCain was a constant critic of Mr Trump’s foreign policy and personal behaviour, and he went on to deliver one of Mr Trump’s first political defeats as President when he was the swing vote that prevented the repeal of Obama­care. When McCain died of a brain tumour in 2018, Mr Trump did not attend his state funeral with other presidents and reportedly resisted calls to fly the White House flag at half-mast.

This year, McCain’s widow, Cindy, became Mr Biden’s most prominent Republican endorsement and may have played a key role in swinging disaffected GOP voters towards the Democratic nominee. “My husband John lived by a code: country first. We are Republicans, yes, but Americans foremost,” she tweeted in September. “There’s only one candidate in this race who stands up for our values as a nation, and that is Joe Biden.”

Mrs McCain went to appear at Arizona rallies for Mr Biden and was the star of a television ad aimed at converting Republicans to the former vice-president’s cause.

Mr Trump may yet prevail in Arizona and his team has demanded the Associated Press and Fox News rescind their decisions to call the state for the Dem­ocrats. Arizona’s Republican governor Doug Ducey said on Twitter that the race was tightening at a rapid pace and it was too early to call. “Not so fast. The race has narrowed in #AZ considerably. 130,000 votes separate the candidates, with hundreds of thousands of votes yet to be counted, from all over the state,” he said.

“I’ll say it again: Let’s count the votes, and let the people decide rather than making declarations.”

Mr Trump himself, who reportedly resisted calls to visit Arizona more often, said on Tuesday, he did not need the state to win. “If you look and you see Arizona, we have a lot of life in that,” he said at the White House.

“Somebody declared it was a victory for — and maybe it will be, it’s possible. But there’s a lot of voters. We don’t even need it, we don’t need that. That’s just a state that we would have gotten and it would have been nice.”

Mr Biden’s strength in Arizona has also been put to a superior get-out-the vote campaign for Latinos. After Latinos abandoned the Democrats in huge droves in Florida and Texas, 1.2 million Latinos are reported to have turned out in Arizona and a large majority backed Mr Biden.