McCain poised to crush Hayworth on Tuesday

J.D. Hayworth sought to
capitalize on Arizona Republicans’ anxiety about illegal immigration
and the fervor of the Tea Party movement to unseat Sen. John McCain
(R-Ariz.).

But McCain ran a brutally effective
campaign against the former congressman and now is poised to secure a crushing
victory over him on Tuesday.

{mosads}“It’s over with,” said Jim Haynes, who directs the Behavior Research Center, a Phoenix-based polling firm.

Two
years after winning his party’s presidential nomination, McCain was in
danger of losing his Senate seat in a primary challenge. His bid for
the White House had drawn his attention away from Arizona and put a
national spotlight on his support for immigration reform — a
controversial issue in his home state.

“It was always a long shot, but yes, a shot,” Haynes said of
Hayworth’s challenge. “He had some opportunities with McCain’s
immigration stance during his presidential campaign.”

To shore
up his right flank, McCain drifted away from some of the issues he
championed years ago. He gave a muted response to the recent Supreme
Court decision that lifted restrictions he helped pass on campaign
spending. He also stopped pushing for immigration reform and instead
touted his support for increased security along the border — including
a fence he once opposed.

He also went on offense early against Hayworth, who had spent months blasting McCain from the studio of his talk radio show.
 
Even
before Hayworth officially got into the race, McCain’s campaign was
already bringing up his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The
McCain camp challenged Hayworth to disclose the donors to his Freedom
in Truth Trust (FITT), which he set up in 2008 to pay down legal bills
stemming from the Abramoff lobbying scandal.

Hayworth responded by bringing up the Keating Five scandal, but he
never used the issue in a TV ad. McCain, meanwhile, saved a TV ad
linking Abramoff and Hayworth for the closing stages of the campaign —
effectively putting the nail in the coffin of his rival’s effort.

Once Hayworth was in the race, he started soliciting support from
Arizona Tea Party groups. “I think it’s vital to have Tea Party
support,” Hayworth told The Hill back in March. “A lot of people [are]
getting involved for the first time. It’s 1994 to the 10th power.”

Here he had some modest success, eventually getting the backing of
more than a dozen local organizations. But McCain was able to
neutralize that momentum by bringing in Sarah Palin, an icon of many
Tea Party activists, for two rallies in March.

“It’s a beautiful, grass-roots movement. It’s putting government
back on the side of people,” Palin said at a rally in Tucson with
McCain. “Everybody here today who supports John McCain, we are all part
of that Tea Party movement.”

The turning point came in June, when the McCain campaign released
two TV spots that used footage from a 2007 infomercial for National
Grants Conferences which featured Hayworth telling viewers that
government “free money grants” were not “too good to be true.”

“It seemed like coinciding with that whole onslaught, all of a
sudden you heard nothing from Hayworth,” said Haynes said, whose firm
conducted polls before and after the ads aired.

Hayworth eventually responded to McCain’s infomercial ads with a spot
accusing the senator of “lying” about his support for the “amnesty
bill,” but the damage was already done.

A
survey conducted after the infomercial ads went up on the air showed
McCain widening his lead on Hayworth. McCain got 64 percent of the test
vote, compared to only 19 percent for Hayworth, in a Rocky Mountain
Poll by BRC released in July. An April survey by the group showed
Hayworth getting 28 percent to 54 percent for McCain.

“The people holding the purse strings saw that McCain was crushing him — Hayworth’s funding dried up,” Haynes said.

Hayworth
raised $413,000 in July, according to his Federal Election Commission
filing, which was a slight drop from his second quarter
monthly totals when he was taking in an average of $450,000. McCain raised
an average of almost $765,000 in the final four months of the campaign.

“That was an error in personal judgment,” Hayworth said about appearing in the infomercials. “I apologized for that.”

In
a television interview Friday, he insisted he would make “history”
Tuesday by defeating McCain. If he doesn’t, there’s unlikely to be any
sort of unity event. Hayworth would only say he’d “support the
Republican ticket” — but not McCain himself — if he lost.