When Did John McCain Become a Senator?
John McCain won election to the U.S. Senate in 1986, succeeding Barry Goldwater, who had served five terms. McCain's path to the Senate was unconventional. The son and grandson of Navy admirals, McCain didn't begin his political career in earnest until after he retired from the Navy.
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Background
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John McCain's first real taste of politics came when the Navy assigned him to duty in the Navy's Senate liaison office in Washington, D.C., in 1979. While working there, he met and became friends with several prominent politicians, including John Tower, Gary Hart and Bill Cohen.
Still, politics was not exactly in John McCain's blood---the men in his family were, and are, Navy men. Both of his grandfathers were four-star admirals, his father commanded submarines during World War II, and McCain's son and grandson have followed him into the service.
Navy Career
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As a student at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, however, McCain didn't look to be on his way to a distinguished record. He graduated in 1958, ranked 79 out of a class of 116, mostly because of lackluster classroom performance and conflicts with the faculty over mostly minor infractions of the rules.
Nevertheless, McCain managed to graduate and went on to flight school, where he became a naval aviator. His biographer, Robert Timberg, described his flying career as "remarkably eventful if turbulent."
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Prisoner of War
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While stationed in Florida, McCain met and married Carol Shepp. In 1967, he was sent to Vietnam, where he flew fighter jets on bombing missions from the decks of aircraft carriers. On Oct. 26, 1967, McCain was shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was very badly injured, and the torture and poor living conditions he endured over the next five-and-a-half years exacerbated those injuries, some of which still affect him. McCain was finally released and returned to the United States on March 14, 1973.
Entering Politics
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McCain spent quite some time recovering from his war wounds before he was sent to Washington D.C. In 1979, he met Cindy Hensley, whom he married in 1980, about a month after his divorce from Carol was final. After McCain retired from the Navy in April 1981, he and Cindy moved to Phoenix, where her father ran a successful beer distributorship. McCain went to work for his father-in-law, Jim Hensley, but he wasn't much interested in that business. He had by then set his sights firmly on a life in politics.
The Representative From Arizona
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McCain got his chance when Arizona representative John Rhodes announced in January 1982 that he was retiring from the U.S. House of Representatives. McCain immediately bought a house in Mesa, Arizona, and launched a run for the vacant seat. He benefited from the political connections his father-in-law had made over the years, and from his own friendships with prominent people in Arizona such as Charles Keating, Fife Symington III and Darrow "Duke" Tully, publisher of the largest newspaper in the state, The Arizona Republic. Tully took McCain under his wing and began orchestrating his introduction to Arizona's Republican elite. McCain won the seat in the House in 1982 and again in 1984.
Walter Cronkite's Documentary
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In February 1984, just as McCain was about to run for re-election, Walter Cronkite invited the war hero to accompany him to Vietnam to help make the documentary "Honor, Duty and a War Called Vietnam." Timberg believes that this film, which was broadcast nationally, helped make McCain more widely recognizable in Arizona and paved the way for his run for the Senate.
Running for the Senate
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When Barry Goldwater decided not to run for re-election in 1986, it was just the opportunity for which McCain had been waiting. His campaign suffered a setback when it came out that Tully, who had been staunchly supporting McCain's candidacy, had lied about his own war record and was forced to resign his position as the newspaper's publisher.
McCain was also worried that Bruce Babbitt, the immensely popular Democratic governor of Arizona, would run against him. After several months of indecision, Babbitt announced on March 18, 1985, that he would not run for the Senate.
The Democrats recruited Richard Kimball, a former commissioner on the Arizona Corporation Commission, to run against McCain, but Kimball proved no match to the combined impact of McCain's hard campaigning and massive influx of funds from Cindy McCain and other prominent supporters.
John McCain won the election handily, gathering 60 percent of the vote. He was sworn into the Senate in January 1987.
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