McCain Was an Immigration Maverick and Aisle Crosser

By Peggy Sands

The Senate Press Gallery is located directly over the Senate leaders' desk on the third floor of the Senate Chamber. Reporters can't see the presiding chair. They don't need to record the details about what's being said because everything is transcribed quickly on various Congressional resources. Reporters are not allowed to bring in photographic or video equipment nor take historic photos with their cell phones nor type up their impressions on ipads.  Reporters have only their pens and pads to focus mainly on one thing.  The main reason they lean over the long gallery press desks and stare into the chamber below is to watch the dynamics between the Senators on the floor  - the action C-SPAN doesn't cover.  

In particular,m reporters are there to watch and report who crosses the center aisle separating the Democrats and the Republican legislators.  

It's happening less and less in the increasingly partisan Senate – especially whose seats are increasingly being won by former Congressmen used to a much more cantankerous Congress. But the aisle crossers are the ones who seemingly are more congenial, more open to listening to other points of view and to negotiating. They are the ones who are seeking compromise.

Of all the Senators especially in the past five years, John McCain crossed the aisle the most. He was known as "the maverick".

His particular friend on the Democratic side whom McCain would chat, negotiate and legislate for decades was Sen. Ted Kennedy – the liberal "Lion of the Senate".  "My dad loved John McCain despite their political (and background) differences," said former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, the son of the late Senator who died of glioblastoma, the same type of brain cancer that afflicted McCain.   Kennedy died on Aug. 25, 2009,  exactly nine years to the day before McCain.

"Although they disagreed, they were always searching for ways to put their country ahead of their party," said Patrick Kennedy. "It sounds trite, but no, not at all. These days we're living in, we really need people to have that as their goal".

They particularly worked together on a comprehensive immigration bill with President George W. Bush in 2007.  "Arizona is a border state and the bodies were piling up.  That makes it our problem," McCain's State Director Paul Hickman recalled. The bill contained a provision to legalize almost all of the some 15 million immigrants living and working illegally in the country at the time.  But the bill failed to pass – twice.

McCain and Kennedy, seated at their Senate desks across the aisle but fairly close to one another in the Senate, looked stunned when the final vote was announced.  Reporters watched as Congressman Patrick Kennedy came on the floor to help his stricken father leave. Only a few reporters observed McCain sitting at his desk on the floor almost alone, looking ashen, doubtless thinking how this would affect his recently announced run for the Presidency.  His other Democratic friend Senator Diane Feinstein whose generous agricultural labor visa provisos had also failed, was now suggesting that a comprehensive bill was almost impossible to pass and they would have to do it in pieces, including a stand-alone labor piece.

Days later McCain would announce that he now only would support the legalization of large numbers of unauthorized immigrants (aka "undocumented") after enforcement measures had been well established first.  He called it "enforcement first".  Democrats claim to this day that he "flip flopped" from "comprehensive" to "enforcement only".  McCain called it being practical.  Barrack Obama won the election.

In 2013, McCain was one of the "Gang of Eight" – four Republicans, four Democrats – who proposed the so-called "Bipartisan Comprehensive Immigration" bill of 2013.  It passed the Senate in June but, as had been announced previously, was not accepted in the House of Representatives for consideration. House leaders had insisted they wanted immigration reform – but not in a big comprehensive package but in pieces. On July 23, 2013, the Republican dominated Congressional Judiciary committee introduced a stand-alone DREAM Act called the "Kids" Act.  Democrats adamantly opposed it.  

Kennedy died of glioblastoma, the same type of brain cancer that afflicted McCain, on Aug. 25, 2009. McCain died on the same day August 25 2018 exactly nine years after.  Some might say that the maverick McCain was the John Adams to Kennedy's patrician Thomas Jefferson – founding fathers and friends who disagreed and died on the same day, July 4th,  in 1826.

After Kennedy's death, there was a brief movement by Democrats to rename the Russell Senate Office Building for Kennedy.  Now there is a similar movement – perhaps successful this time – to rename the building for McCain.  Both often crossed the aisle.

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