Kirkpatrick, McCain debate: Senate candidates trade jabs over support for Clinton, Trump

U.S. Sen. John McCain said Monday that it was Donald Trump’s recently revealed demeaning remarks about women that forced him to “part company” with his party on whom to send to the White House.

“If someone wants to say something disparaging of me, I understand that,” McCain, the five-term Republican incumbent, said during an hourlong debate with his Democratic challenger that quickly turned to the GOP’s divisive presidential nominee.

“I spoke out on several other issues where I thought Mr. Trump was absolutely wrong. I’ve not been shy about it,” he continued. “When Mr. Trump attacks women … that is a point where I just have to part company. It’s not pleasant for me to renounce the nominee of my party.”

U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, the Flagstaff Democrat challenging him in the Nov. 8 general election, said McCain offered his support for Trump more than 60 times and suggested that until recently McCain was willing to allow Trump to control the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

McCain fired back that Kirkpatrick would support Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, whom he cast as a serial liar willing to mislead parents who had lost a son about what had happened in the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya.

Even so, McCain acknowledged, “I worry about the future of the Republican Party.” McCain noted he might write in his friend, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, saying he could not vote for either leading candidate.

Partisan disagreements on several key issues

The debate, the only one in the 2016 race for the U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, featured partisan splits on issues such as the health-care changes enacted under President Barack Obama and government regulations.

In Arizona's marquee race of 2016, McCain, 80, the 2008 presidential nominee and the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, faces Kirkpatrick, 66, a former Coconino County prosecutor and former state legislator who is serving her third term in the U.S. House of Representatives, after losing her seat in 2010 and winning it again in 2012.

Kirkpatrick has largely tried to make the race a referendum on the long-serving McCain, saying he has changed since first winning election to the U.S. House in 1982. He subsequently won his Senate seat in 1986. Her campaign has painted him as a politically calculating D.C. insider desperate to cling to power.

She has constantly hammered McCain for his previous support of Trump even in spite of their history of personal antagonism.

McCain's campaign, in turn, has characterized Kirkpatrick's record as largely do-nothing on big issues such as comprehensive immigration reform, which he championed most recently as one of the co-authors of a bipartisan bill that passed the Senate in 2013. McCain also has criticized Kirkpatrick for voting for the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare," the 2010 health-care-reform law that he opposed. He also has tried to make an issue of her support for the White House-backed Iran nuclear deal.

Kirkpatrick said McCain throughout his career had now taken more money from Wall Street than anyone in the Senate.

Agree on need for immigration reform

McCain and Kirkpatrick largely agree on the need for comprehensive immigration reform, a huge issue for Arizona, but disagreed over why it has not been enacted despite a debate that reaches back more than a decade. McCain blamed Democrats; Kirkpatrick blamed Republicans.

Kirkpatrick talked up her support for “dreamers,” the young immigrants brought to the country by their parents as children, and said she has a broad-based “immigration working group that meets periodically.” She said the law is broken, which has become "an economic issue, because it hurts business, but it's a moral issue because it's tearing families apart."

5 key moments from the John McCain-Ann Kirkpatrick debate

“We think, right now, we’ve got the votes in the House to do that (pass comprehensive immigration reform), but our leadership — Senator McCain’s leadership — won’t bring it up for a vote,” Kirkpatrick said.

McCain noted that he was able to steer a bipartisan immigration bill through the Senate in 2013, adding there’s “a very big difference between having working groups, and talking about it, and legislative accomplishments.”

McCain’s immigration-reform vision would take care of the "dreamers" but also secure the border.

“In 2009, when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, they had 60 votes in the Senate, an overwhelming majority in the House,” McCain said. “Do you think that Barack Obama or Congresswoman Kirkpatrick brought up immigration reform? No, of course, not: They wanted to do 'Obamacare,' the disaster of 'Obamacare.' ”

Earlier in the election cycle, it appeared that McCain's re-election prospects were precarious. McCain has long been distrusted and disliked by many Arizona Republican activists, and Trump at the top of the GOP ticket looked like a major problem.

However, since McCain defeated his Republican primary opponents, he has opened up a lead over Kirkpatrick in the general-election race. Four public polls released since the primary show McCain with leads ranging from 13 to 20 percentage points. In the recent Arizona polls, McCain has strongly outperformed Trump. But it remains to be seen how much McCain's disavowal of Trump will hurt him with the pro-Trump base.

Concern over problems at VA

In Monday's debate, both candidates expressed dismay at the problems at the beleaguered Phoenix VA Medical Center.

Kirkpatrick said she is willing to give the latest director of the Phoenix system a chance to turn around the hospital. McCain said he would give her a chance as well, though he blames a dysfunctional system that requires more comprehensive change.

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As for the threat of the terrorist group the Islamic State, Kirkpatrick said that, unlike McCain, she did not want to respond by sending troops into battle.

“John McCain’s solution is to send in more troops anytime there’s a crisis,” she said. “I don’t want to send any more troops in until we have a plan to bring them home, and a plan to take care of them once they get home.”

McCain blamed the current problems in the Middle East on the Obama administration’s handling of the end of the war in Iraq. Namely, he said Obama drew down the U.S. forces too quickly.

After the debate, McCain spoke briefly with reporters.

"Well, I thought it was an excellent debate and I enjoyed the topics," McCain said. "I think that they were well-covered, and I believe that Congresswoman Kirkpatrick did a good job. I think we were able to define a lot of the differences between the two of us, and so we'll see what happens in a few weeks."

Max Croes, Kirkpatrick's campaign manager, subsequently emerged to tell the media that Kirkpatrick had left for another event and would not be available for post-debate questions.

Croes said that Kirkpatrick won the debate.

Trump, 'Obamacare' cast shadows over McCain vs. Kirkpatrick Senate race