WASHINGTON – More than 100 former Sen. John McCain staff members support Joseph R. Biden Jr., a show of support for the political division that they hope strengthens the former senator’s country first credo in Arizona.
That motto and “his frequent call to Americans to serve causes greater than our self-interest were not empty slogans like so many of our politicians today,” the group of aid workers, most of them still Republicans, wrote in a joint statement praising Mr. McCain and implicitly focus on President Trump. “It was the word of faith that he lived, and he encouraged us to do the same.”
The list of signatories includes a range of people – from chiefs of staff in the senate of Mr. McCain to junior assistants on his campaigns – who worked for him over his 35 years in Congress and during two presidential terms.
Mark Salter, Mr. McCain’s longtime chief assistant and speechwriter, helped organize the letter.
“We have different views on Joe Biden and the Democratic Party platform – most of us will disagree with a fair amount – but we all agree that getting Donald Trump out of office is clearly in the national interest,” said Mr. Salter.
Concurrent with Mr. Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday and the second anniversary of Mr’s death. the president.
Democrats used their convention last week to commemorate the friendship that Mr. Biden and Mr. McCain forged and to highlight the support that Mr. Biden enjoys from some former Republican lawmakers and national security officials.
Many of the one-time McCain assistants who signed the letter share his hawkish views on foreign policy and recall from Mr. Trump’s “America First” policy, which Mr. Salter’s “codling of dictators or disinterested in our alliances ”mentioned.
The statement alone is unlikely to affect the presidential race. However, an allied Republican group hopes to take advantage of this by launching a new television ad in Arizona, a highly competitive state that contrasts with Mrs’ acceptance.
“A word to Senator Obama and his supporters,” Mr. McCain said at the time, in words the group, Republican voters against Trump, used in the ad. “Despite our differences, it unites us much more than divides us. We are fellow Americans, and that is an association that means more to me than any other. ”
The statement will also run on Friday in The Washington Post, the morning after Mr Trump’s acceptance speech.
The treaty covenants for fourth year nominations mostly pay homage to party leaders who have died since the last meeting. But at this week’s Republican convention, there was no mention of Mr. McCain, who bitterly clashed with Mr. Trump and the president did not want to attend his funeral. (Mr. Trump continued to attack Mr. McCain after his death.) Nothing has been done yet to honor former President George Bush, who also died in 2018.
In fact, it is very likely that Mr McCain ended up having more respect for the Democratic convention than for his own party. His widow, Cindy McCain, participated in a video about his friendship with Mr Biden, but did not address the virtual democratic gathering.
It remains unclear how far she will go with her support for Mr. Biden, who hopes to put Arizona in the Democratic column for the first time since 1996.
Mr. McCain’s closest advisers were particularly impressed by Mr. Biden’s friendliness in the last months of his former colleague and how he traveled to Arizona to visit Mr. McCain in his hut.
Mr Salter, who led the effort to collect signatures along with former McCain assistants Christian Ferry, Niki Christoff and Joe Donoghue, said they had limited their broadcast to staff members, and were not looking for McCain’s family members.
He noted that some former aid workers had refused to sign because of their current jobs as political commitments, but added that many were more enthusiastic about joining. In fact, most senior officials of Mr. President’s two campaigns. McCain publicly supports Mr. Biden.
“These are unusual times, and this is not an easy decision for Republicans to make,” they added in the statement, “but we are heartbroken by Joe Biden’s history of bilingualism.”
