Meghan McCain’s husband said that Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., would be an “unwise choice” for Arizona senator.
“McSally strikes me as an unwise choice for a number of reasons,” Ben Domenech tweeted. “She’s like an NFL team that plays down to its opponents’ level – and she’ll be tasked with running for re-election immediately.”
[NEW: Martha McSally, GOP’s defeated 2018 Senate candidate, to fill John McCain’s Arizona seat]
McSally strikes me as an unwise choice for a number of reasons. She’s like an NFL team that plays down to its opponents’ level – and she’ll be tasked with running for re-election immediately. https://t.co/C01s2sL28e
— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) December 14, 2018
Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Republican Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. and a host of the cable television show The View, retweeted her husband’s comment.
Domenech was responding to reports that Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey might pick McSally, 52, as Sen. Jon Kyl’s replacement as he steps down from the U.S. Senate at the end of the year. McSally, a former Air Foce colonel and the first American woman to fly in combat, is retiring from Congress next month after narrowly losing a Senate contest to Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., last month.
Kyl, 76, was appointed last September to replace McCain, 81, who died in office following a battle with brain cancer.
If the McCain family is against a McSally appointment, it could doom her chances of being given the interim position.
It seems that McSally realizes she needs to make amends. Hours after Domenech’s tweet, she met with McCain’s widow, Cindy McCain, Friday afternoon, sources told the Arizona Republic, to apologize for not using her husband’s name at the president’s signing of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2019.
The Republican sources say that she appreciated McSally’s apology, but the two did not speak directly about the potential Senate appointment during their half-hour meeting.
Sources also told the Washington Post this week that the governor no longer has the same enthusiasm he previously had in replacing Kyl with McSally.
Normally under Arizona law, when a Senate seat is vacated, it is filled by a gubernatorial appointment until the state’s next general election. If McSally were to be appointed, she would face reelection in 2020, meaning she would almost immediately mount a reelection campaign after taking office in 2019.
Ducey and Kyl, however, are facing a legal battle that calls for a special election mounted at the end of November.
The lawsuit says that Ducey is in violation of the 17th Amendment and calls for the court to direct the governor to call a special election to fill the seat within six months. It says that an appointee cannot serve for a long period of time instead of someone elected by voters.
