Who Was Makeup Artist For Cindy Mccain

Editor's note: This is the eighth of an 18-chapter profile of Sen. John McCain, portions of which originally were published in October 1999 and March 2007. Information technology has been updated and expanded. Read more nigh this project: John McCain's American Story.

For some politicians, the Keating Five scandal was too much to overcome.

Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., declined to seek a quaternary Senate term in 1994.

Three-term Sen. Donald Riegle, D-Mich., also decided to retire rather than face the voters that year.

Sen. Alan Cranston, D-Calif., who received the severest rebuke from the Senate Ethics Committee, had opted not to seek a 5th term in 1992.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., refused to surrender.

He employed a dual strategy. He would brand himself accessible to whatever reporter anywhere who wanted to talk nearly the Keating V, and he wouldn't let the controversy detract from his work as a senator.

McCain grimly marched virtually the country, struggling to articulate his name.

"I accept to say, it was not an easy fourth dimension," said Torie Clarke, McCain'due south former press secretary. "But because of the strategy he decided to pursue ... nobody had time to sit down effectually and experience deplorable for themselves."

McCain's hobnobbing with the press had an unexpected side consequence. Reporters started to like him.

McCain ever returned phone calls. He showed up for television appearances. He was willing to go off the tape to assistance reporters unearth stories. He answered questions bluntly, without much political tap dancing.

For Beltway reporters bored with bureaucrats, McCain was fresh, new and different.

"Everybody in town," Clarke said, "from the makeup artist at the local news station to the producers and directors, every reporter and every editor, loves working with John McCain because he does not stand on ceremony; he has no arrogance."

A second run for the Senate

Going into the 1992 election, some thought McCain was in problem and not just because of Keating.

President George H.Westward. Bush was dropping in the polls and would lose that year to Democrat Bill Clinton.

McCain's Democratic opponent was Claire Sargent, a Phoenix community activist.

Former Republican Gov. Evan Mecham likewise was running for the Senate as an independent despite having been impeached and removed from function in 1988.

Mecham, a divisive and controversial figure in Arizona politics, nursed a grudge against McCain, who had joined other Arizona GOP establishment figures, including former Sen. Barry Goldwater, in calling for Mecham's resignation. (And "for which I earned the lasting enmity of some of his supporters," McCain would later note.)

Some conservative voters remained fiercely loyal to Mecham. Sure state lawmakers central to the impeachment proceedings — notably Arizona House Speaker Joe Lane, R-Willcox, and Senate President Carl Kunasek, R-Mesa — lost their seats in the immediate backwash.

Some Republicans worried that Mecham could act as a spoiler and throw the Senate seat to the Democrats. The McCain campaign initially sought to block Mecham from the ballot.

But McCain bounced back in 1991. Before long after the Persian Gulf State of war broke out, McCain was in demand. The telephone began ringing off the hook the mean solar day POWs were taken.

" 'The Today Show' called, and we started on 'The Today Show' at 4-something in the morning," said Scott Celley, a former aide. "The last thing I retrieve him being on was 'Australian Nightline,' which was done hither at Channel 10, a few blocks away, at shut to 11 p.m. He was on idiot box or the radio every minute of that mean solar day."

McCain became a regular on public-affairs shows, using his expertise as a onetime Navy pilot and POW. He quickly became a national authority on strange diplomacy.

The din of the Keating 5 began to lessen. McCain stayed on message, and the scandal gradually faded from the public consciousness.

The tough re-election fight McCain dreaded never materialized.

Sargent didn't mount much of a campaign, though she did briefly draw national attending later on making a slightly off-color observation.

"I think it'due south about time we voted for senators with breasts," Sargent joked. "After all, nosotros've been voting for boobs long enough."

A few sparks did fly between McCain and the combative Mecham, who besides happened to be a old prisoner of war held past the Germans during World War II. At a news conference, Mecham accused McCain of "selling out his fellow POWs" and participating in a government cover-upwards concerning U.S. servicemen abandoned in Southeast Asia.

McCain called Mecham's allegation "the kind of contemptuous lie which the people of Arizona have sadly come to wait in any of Mecham's political campaigns."

It made for entertaining political theater, merely Mecham ultimately had petty impact on the ballot-box results. His day in Arizona politics had passed.

Fifty-fifty in a race split three means, McCain swept up 56 percent of the votes to clinch his second term. Mecham finished behind Sargent.

"The pictures of me cavorting on a Bahamian beach with Charlie that I had anticipated seeing in Arizona newspapers never fabricated an advent in the entrada," McCain reflects in his 2002 memoir "Worth the Fighting For." "(Fellow Keating Five member) John Glenn also was re-elected."

Moving on from Keating Five scandal

In 1995, "The Nightingale'due south Song" lionized McCain. The book examined the military and political careers of McCain and four other Annapolis graduates: Robert McFarlane, John Poindexter, Oliver N and James Webb, who in 2006 would win a hard-fought race against Sen. George Allen, R-Va.

In anticipation of McCain's 2000 presidential run, author Robert Timberg spun the McCain portion of "The Nightingale's Song" into its own book. "John McCain: An American Odyssey" all the same stands equally the most authoritative McCain biography.

Timberg penned this coda about the Keating 5:

"Stripped of the veneer of sleaze that coated the affair, McCain's defence force of his actions was solid and credible. It didn't affair. The Keating Five label endured, shabby journalistic shorthand that fabricated upwardly in simple-mindedness what it lacked in precision."

On Election Nighttime 1992, the triumphant McCain told The Arizona Republic: "I think this puts the issue behind me, aye, politically."

Past 1996, McCain'due south image had recuperated to the point where the vice presidential candidate churr resumed. This time, McCain was a rumored forepart-runner to be Bob Dole's running mate earlier Dole chose Jack Kemp in his race confronting Clinton and Al Gore. McCain that year had supported the short-lived White House bid of his friend Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas. He even served equally Gramm's national entrada chairman.

The Keating Five scandal, which never was easy to understand or explain, wasn't much of a factor in McCain'due south 2000 presidential bid.

McCain knows information technology will never disappear altogether.

"Despite my recovery, the Keating Five feel was not one that I have walked away from as easily as I accept other bad times," McCain wrote in 2002. "Twelve years subsequently its conclusion, I still wince thinking about information technology and find that if I do not repress the memory, its recollection nevertheless provokes a vague just real feeling that I had lost something very of import, something that was sacrificed in the pursuit of gratifying ambitions, my own and others', and that I might never possess again as convincingly equally I once had."

'I'm Cindy, and I'thou an addict'

By the early on 1990s, McCain'due south political rehabilitation seemed complete, simply the Keating V fallout would go on to overshadow his personal life and bear on his relationship with the local media.

In August 1994, a group of Valley journalists received an unusual telephone call from Jay Smith, McCain'due south political strategist.

They were offered an sectional story in exchange for agreeing to certain terms. They would attend private interview sessions Aug. 19 and sit on the story until Aug. 22. The v journalists — three print reporters, a tv reporter and a radio reporter — agreed.

One by 1, they went to the McCain home, where they heard an incredible story.

Cindy McCain, 40, told them that she had been a drug addict for three years. From 1989 to 1992, as the Keating Five made headlines, she was addicted to Percocet and Vicodin. Worse, she had stolen pills from the American Voluntary Medical Squad, a relief arrangement that she founded to assist Third World countries.

"More than than anything, I wanted to exist able to face up my children, for them to know I wasn't lying to them," she said at the fourth dimension. "They're too immature to fully understand right now, only anytime they volition."

Cindy blamed two back surgeries and the Keating Five scandal — a blend of concrete and emotional pain — for hooking her on drugs.

Things started to unravel when a Drug Enforcement Administration audit found irregularities in the charity's records, prompting an investigation, Cindy told the reporters.

In 1992, as the Keating affair surfaced once again during McCain's run for a second Senate term, Cindy's parents confronted her virtually her drug apply.

What had been clear to Cindy's parents was lost on McCain, who said he had not noticed his wife'south addiction.

"I was stunned," McCain said at the time. "Naturally, I felt enormous sadness for Cindy and a certain sense of guilt that I hadn't detected information technology. I feel very sad for what she went through, but I'm very proud she was able to come out of information technology. For her, information technology was similar the Keating affair had been for me, a searing experience, and we both came out stronger. I think it has strengthened our union and our overall relationship."

The belatedly Phoenix Gazette political columnist John Kolbe helped break the story.

His Aug. 25, 1994, cavalcade was headlined and led with a powerful quote:

"I'thou Cindy, and I'm an addict."

Kolbe besides drew a straight line between Cindy'south drug predicament and the Keating Five stress.

"As the family bookkeeper, she was unable to find records of her reimbursement to Keating for three vacation trips to the Commonwealth of the bahamas on Keating's corporate plane," Kolbe wrote. "The apparent lack of reimbursement — which wasn't resolved until the records turned up months later — became a key ethical charge against the senator."

Cindy explained to Kolbe: "It wasn't my fault, merely at the time, you couldn't convince me. (Senate Ethics Committee Chairman) Howell Heflin (D-Ala.) even told me it was my mistake."

To avoid prosecution on drug charges, she would enter a federal diversion program.

In telling her story, Cindy choked up when she told of federal drug agents knocking on her door, asking nearly missing pills.

The reporters were sympathetic.

Cindy had always been physically frail. She suffered two miscarriages early in her marriage to McCain until doctors determined she was a "DES babe." Cindy's mother had been given the drug diethylstilbestrol during her pregnancy.

During the 1940s and 1950s, DES was idea to prevent miscarriages. Instead, it caused numerous nativity defects, including deformed uteruses in female offspring. Doctors finally detected the trouble and took special precautions during Cindy's third pregnancy.

Fifty-fifty so, there were long separations because Cindy could non travel while pregnant. Besides, she preferred Arizona to Washington.

Cindy told the reporters that she finally entered The Meadows, a drug-treatment eye in Wickenburg, and went to anti-dependency meetings twice a week.

In 1993, she said, a hysterectomy ended the nagging back pain that had driven her to the painkillers.

And so why get public a year later on?

"If what I say can help just 1 person to face up the trouble, it's worthwhile," she said. "They should know information technology's OK to exist scared. Information technology's OK to talk nearly information technology. And there's nothing wrong with staying home, carpooling and potty-training a three-yr-old."

Given Cindy'southward heartfelt confession, the handpicked journalists did what Smith expected. They painted Cindy as the victim, a courageous soldier chirapsia back the devil of drug addiction.

"As surely as John McCain was a casualty of Vietnam, Cindy is a casualty of political life," Kolbe quoted an unnamed "friend" as saying. "But at present she is fighting to save herself."

New details emerge

Simply the select group of reporters had not heard the whole story. It became apparent the next week, equally more details came out.

The McCain military camp had organized the interviews to caput off a more negative story that was awaiting publication in the alternative weekly Phoenix New Times. That piece centered on a old American Voluntary Medical Team employee who accused Cindy McCain in a lawsuit of ordering him to conceal "improper acts" and "misrepresent facts in a judicial proceeding."

The accuser was Tom Gosinski, whom the charity had fired in 1993. He had tipped the DEA to check out Cindy's organization. He filed the lawsuit every bit a alert shot. His real allegation was that Cindy McCain had fired him because he "knew as well much" nigh her drug use.

The details were in a 212-page report from the Maricopa County Attorney's Office that was about to become public when McCain arranged the interviews.

Ironically, Canton Chaser Rick Romley entered the fray at the asking of McCain lawyer John Dowd, who alleged that Gosinski was extorting the McCains by offering to settle the example for $250,000.

By asking Romley to investigate, Dowd helped to create a public record that otherwise would not have existed.

The invitation-only interviews were non exactly a suave PR motility. By playing favorites with the disclosure of the news, McCain created hard feelings amid the Valley journalists who were not invited. They aggressively chased the story.

McCain refused to talk to reporters who were not invited to Cindy's individual interviews.

Dowd, who would later defend Gov. Fife Symington, put it plainly to a Republic reporter who called him for annotate:

"You lot're not going to talk to Cindy. You're non going to talk to me. Yous're not going to talk to anybody associated with us. Have yous got the message?"

Then he hung up.

Meanwhile, new allegations were surfacing, feeding the press frenzy for fresh angles, especially in light of McCain'southward silence.

Gosinski alleged that Cindy had asked him to lie to go far easier for her to adopt a babe from People's republic of bangladesh.

Backed up by court documents, the McCains characterized the adoption (from i of Mother Teresa's orphanages) every bit "proper in every respect." They noted that the adoption probably saved the abandoned babe's life, equally her cleft palate would not have allowed her to survive in Bangladesh.

In an Aug. 26, 1994, response to a Phoenix Gazette news article about the adoption, McCain accused the newspaper of trying to "tarnish a story of kindness with the brush of scandal."

"I volition accept a groovy deal in public life, but I cannot accept this," McCain wrote. "I enquire the reporters of The Gazette and every reporter to please have a moment to consider whether it is really in the people's involvement to make a family — whatever family — suffer in public because they chose to alive some of their happiness and their sorrow in private."

Gosinski's brownie started to skid. In Romley's study, several clemency staffers said Gosinski had privately threatened to blackmail Cindy if she e'er fired him.

Ultimately, Gosinski's lawsuit was dropped, and he was never prosecuted.

Cindy maintains she has avoided drugs since the scandal, which she candidly revisited in a 1999 "Dateline NBC" interview.

"I have done adept things, and the best thing I've ever done is get into recovery and stay drug-gratuitous," she said on the Boob tube bear witness.

In the years since, Cindy McCain has continued her charity work. She was agile for many years with the HALO Trust, an international humanitarian organization dedicated to removing country mines and unexploded shells and bombs from one-time battlefields. She traveled around the earth on HALO missions, to places such as Angola, Cambodia and Sri Lanka, and served as chairwoman of HALO USA until December 2015.

Cindy McCain also has emerged as a prominent activist fighting sex-trafficking, serving every bit co-chair of Arizona Govs. Jan Brewer's and Doug Ducey'due south human-trafficking council and raising awareness most the issue through the McCain Constitute for International Leadership at Arizona State Academy.

Side by side Affiliate: John McCain becomes the 'maverick'

John McCain'southward American Story

Chapter 1: John McCain a study in contradiction
Chapter 2:John McCain was destined for the Naval University
Chapter 3:John McCain was 'a very determined guy' as a Pw
Affiliate 4:John McCain's political ambition emerged after POW return
Chapter 5:John McCain'south political career began after Arizona move
Affiliate 6:Always-aggressive, John McCain rises to the Senate
Chapter vii: John McCain 'in a hell of a mess' with Keating Five
Affiliate eight:After Keating Five, John McCain faced new scandal
Chapter nine:John McCain becomes the 'maverick'
Affiliate x:'Ugly' politics in John McCain'south 2000 presidential run
Affiliate 11:John McCain was frequent foe of Bush in early years
Affiliate 12:John McCain goes establishment for 2nd White Firm run
Chapter xiii:John McCain had crude start to 2008 presidential race
Affiliate xiv:John McCain clinches 2008 GOP presidential nomination
Chapter 15: John McCain takes on Obama for president in 2008
Chapter sixteen: John McCain fails in second bid for president
Chapter 17: 'Consummate the danged fence,' John McCain proclaims
Chapter 18: John McCain wins 6th term, reclaims 'bohemian' label

Source: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2018/04/02/john-mccain-overcame-keating-five-cindy-mccain-drug-addiction-scandal-arizona-senator/538024001/

Posted by: jacobsfure1940.blogspot.com

Share this post