Salon.com > J.D. Hayworth

Congratulations, John McCain!

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:15:00 +0000

A four-term Arizona Senator handily won his primary election last night, and all he had to do was continue to embarrass and debase himself on the national stage. Now the 73-year-old veteran is one more grinding general election away from returning to his home in Virginia for six more years in order to serve bitterly in what will most likely remain a Senate minority, under a Democratic president whom McCain clearly despises.

The national political press that once imagined he was a principled maverick, because he was a sore loser who delighted in sabotaging George Bush, was also wrong about McCain being vulnerable due to his perceived moderateness. Though they were eventually right that he would probably win, once his opponent, a local talk radio host and former infomercial pitchman, revealed himself as an unelectable charlatan.

At least he will finally get to be back with his only true friend in the world, Lindsey Graham.

Aiding McCain in destroying the once-proud McCain "brand" will be his daughter Meghan, who will continue to pen flighty columns for Tina Brown's expensive experiment in publishing her friends online next to slideshows, and who is touring the east coast promoting her glossy new book about being a young Republican woman who is not scared to say the word "sex," a lot.

His wife will remain, presumably happily, in Arizona and California.

Why is John McCain doing this to himself?

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:45:00 +0000

John McCain is probably going to win next month’s Republican Senate primary in Arizona – if only because his main challenger, former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, is an opposition researcher’s dream.

When the two men debated on Friday night (along with a third candidate who hasn’t yet made a blip in the polls), McCain was able to deflect his foe’s glib attacks by mocking Hayworth for his decision to cash-in as a lobbyist after losing his House seat in 2006, his embarrassing stint as a “free money” pitchman, and his apparent belief that the United States never declared war on Hitler’s Germany. Even in today’s irrational, Tea Party-fied GOP, it’s hard to imagine McCain losing to Hayworth on August 24.

Monday link dump: Snake attack

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:01:00 +0000

Look, I don't have any proof, but I don't think this anecdote is true: "George Will recalled that [J.D. Hayworth] jogged wearing a T-shirt that read, 'If two teenagers can procreate in the back seat of a Volkswagen, why does a spotted owl need 2,000 acres?'" That is just a lot to fit on a T-shirt.
Minnesota state Sen. Tarryl Clark is now the sole Democratic challenger to Michele Bachmann.
But the New York GOP can't unite around one challenger to Kirsten Gillibrand.
How did you celebrate Bilderberg weekend? Did you secretly rule the world?
Here is a story about yet another "Tea Party candidate" who did a crazy thing. This one called 911 because someone (her political opponents, I mean) put a snake in her pool.

McCain: J.D. Hayworth is dumb

Tue, 25 May 2010 16:45:00 +0000

John McCain's campaign can't seem to decide whether they think J.D. Hayworth's Republican primary bid is a real threat to the incumbent's political career, or a nuisance launched by a guy who even Arizona's GOP voters realize doesn't belong in the Senate.

A new Web ad McCain launched Tuesday lands pretty firmly on the latter side. Watch here:

McCain advisors say their polling finds many Arizona voters don't consider Hayworth an entirely serious candidate; obviously, a Web ad that tags him as dumb seems to play directly into that. When Hayworth served in the House, he often came off as a blowhard, portentously calling for over-the-top legislation on immigration and border control without actually getting any of it done. That helped Democrat Harry Mitchell beat him in 2006 in a marginal district (that, and Hayworth's ties to Jack Abramoff). The Arizona Republic called Hayworth a bully in endorsing Mitchell.

John McCain isn’t a maverick now that it might hurt him

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:50:00 +0000

For years now, it's seemed like the word "maverick" was permanently fused to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. He seemed to cherish it, and his advisors often worked to push it; they may have played it down a little during the 2008 Republican presidential primary, but it was an essential part of the eventual nominee's image during the campaign.

Now, though, McCain is in another Republican primary, facing a legitimate challenger from his right -- former Rep. J.D. Hayworth -- in a decidedly anti-incumbent year. So he's been reinventing himself to some extent. He went to the right on immigration, for instance, despite the fact that his moderation on the issue had been one of his signatures between the 2000 and 2008 campaigns.

The senator's latest step in that direction goes much further than that, however.

"'Maverick' is a mantle McCain no longer claims; in fact, he now denies he ever was one," Newsweek's David Margolick reports in a new article, quoting McCain as saying, "I never considered myself a maverick."

John McCain leads J.D. Hayworth in new poll

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 17:55:00 +0000

So far, J.D. Hayworth's campaign to beat Sen. John McCain for the Republican nomination for McCain's seat in Arizona is looking like little more than a nuisance.

A new Research 2000 poll sponsored by Daily Kos, out Friday, showed McCain beating Hayworth easily, 52-37. Meanwhile, McCain ended the first quarter of 2010 with $4.5 million in the bank, after raising more than $2.2 million this year so far. Hayworth announced that he raised more than $1 million, but didn't say exactly how much. (And one of his top advisors, Arizona public relations mogul Jason Rose, recently quit because Hayworth couldn't, or wouldn't, give him a paying contract to keep working on the campaign.)

Why is reality so liberally biased against J.D. Hayworth?

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:20:00 +0000

Former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., was on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show" Monday night. He talked with Maddow about a few different things -- one of them, of course, his recent comments about same-sex marriage leading to marriage between people and horses, which he tried to defend. It didn't go well.

As I noted in my post on the subject yesterday, Hayworth's whole premise was faulty, as it started from a quote that just plain doesn't exist. He said that when the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, it defined marriage as simply "the establishment of intimacy." In fact, that phrase never appears in the court's decision.

Maddow, too, called Hayworth on this, and he didn't have an answer. Instead, he went a sort of post-modern route:

MADDOW: [W]hat you said about the establishment of intimacy being the definition of marriage in Massachusetts, I don't think it's true, sir.

HAYWORTH: Well, that's fine. You and I can have a disagreement about that.

MADDOW: Well, it either is true or it isn't. It's empirical.

HAYWORTH: OK. OK.

MADDOW: All right.

HAYWORTH: Well, I appreciate the fact that we have a disagreement on that.

The new “man on dog”?

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:01:00 +0000

During his current primary challenge of Sen. John McCain, former Rep. J.D. Hayworth has been saying some outlandish things. First, he seemed to embrace Birtherism; now he's trying to outdo former Sen. Rick Santorum.

"You see, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, when it started this move toward same-sex marriage, actually defined marriage -- now get this -- it defined marriage as simply, quote, 'the establishment of intimacy,'" Hayworth said during a radio interview this past weekend.

"Now how dangerous is that? I mean, I don't mean to be absurd about it, but I guess I can make the point of absurdity with an absurd point -- I guess that would mean if you really had affection for your horse, I guess you could marry your horse. It's just the wrong way to go, and the only way to protect the institution of marriage is with that federal marriage amendment that I support."

J.D. Hayworth’s Drudge ad irks John McCain

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:05:00 +0000

It's pretty early into the Republican primary campaign between Sen. John McCain and former Arizona Rep. J.D. Hayworth. But two things are already clear: McCain and his staff don't like Hayworth much -- and Hayworth may well spend the rest of the campaign trying to poke McCain in the eye politically, just to provoke a reaction.

On Thursday afternoon, McCain aides blasted out a press release that at first seemed a little cryptic. The text:

PHOENIX, AZ — U.S. Senator John McCain’s re-election campaign today released the following statement by Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl calling on ex-Congressman J.D. Hayworth to immediately apologize and take down his new online ad insulting Senator McCain running on the Drudge Report:

"Ads like this have no place in the Republican primary, and J.D. Hayworth should immediately take it down and apologize." -- Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl

A primary challenge for McCain?

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:55:00 +0000

Ever since he's been in the Senate, John McCain hasn't had any wories about job security. The Arizona Republican hasn't had a serious challenge in a general election, nad he's yet to face any sort of real primary challenge. But this next time around, in 2010, things are likely to be different.

The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza reports that former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., is considering running against McCain in the Republican primary next year. If he does get into the race, Hayworth would be the second person to do so, after Minutemen co-founder Chris Simcox.

Photo finish in Arizona

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 23:20:00 +0000

On Tuesday, Democrats stand an outside chance of picking up several House seats and a Senate seat in the once beet-red state of Arizona. Democrat Harry Mitchell is in striking distance of Rep. J.D. Hayworth in the 5th House District, and challenger Jim Pederson has closed within single digits of incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Kyl. But the prospects for Pederson, Mitchell and Democrats in general would be much better had the U.S. Supreme Court not recently upheld the state's new voter I.D. law.

Republicans nationwide have been proposing and passing various laws that require would-be voters to produce photo identification on Election Day. The nominal intent of the laws is to discourage fraudulent voting. In the absence of any real evidence of such fraud, however, the more likely effect of the laws is to disenfranchise members of Democratic-skewing groups -- blacks, Latinos, the poor and college students. Arizona passed its tough photo I.D. law by direct voter referendum in November 2004.