Repub­li­cans for Har­ris lean on mem­o­ry of John McCain in bat­tle­ground Ari­zona

Four years after Ari­zona reject­ed for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, a group of Repub­li­cans sup­port­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris are hop­ing to repeat his­to­ry by evok­ing the mem­o­ry of John McCain.
John Giles, the Repub­li­can may­or of Mesa, appeared at a press con­fer­ence Mon­day to launch a new Repub­li­can task force for Har­ris along­side for­mer Repub­li­can state Rep. Robin Shaw. He, like oth­ers in the pur­ple state, con­sid­ers him­self a “McCain Repub­li­can” and believes his par­ty risks los­ing elec­tions until it choos­es lead­ers with a dif­fer­ent tem­pera­ment.
Trump famous­ly butted heads with the late sen­a­tor, in 2015 ques­tion­ing whether he was a war hero because he was cap­tured dur­ing the Viet­nam War.
“I don’t know why the Repub­li­can Par­ty con­tin­ues not to learn from its mis­takes,” Giles said in an inter­view with the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er. “I con­tin­ue to be a Repub­li­can because I’m hold­ing out hope that after enough failed elec­tions, those run­ning the Ari­zona Repub­li­can Par­ty and the Nation …