By TERRY TANG
PHOENIX (AP) — The Arizona
Republican Party formally censured Sen. John McCain on Saturday, citing a
voting record they say is insufficiently conservative.
The resolution
to censure McCain was approved by a voice-vote during a meeting of state
committee members in Tempe, state party spokesman Tim Sifert said. It
needed signatures from at least 20 percent of state committee members to
reach the floor for debate.
Sifert said no further action was expected.
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers declined to comment on the censure.
McCain
isn't up for re-election until 2016, when will turn 80. He announced in
October that he was considering running for a sixth term.
According to the resolution, the
2008 Republican presidential nominee has campaigned as a conservative
but has lent his support to issues "associated with liberal Democrats,"
such as immigration reform and to funding the law sometimes known as
Obamacare.
Several Republican county committees recently censured McCain.
Timothy
Schwartz, the Legislative District 30 Republican chairman who helped
write the resolution, said the censure showed that McCain was losing
support from his own party.
"We would gladly embrace Sen. McCain if he stood behind us and represented us," Schwartz said.
Fred
DuVal, a Democrat who plans to run for Arizona governor, called the
censure an "outrageous response to the good work Sen. McCain did
crafting a reasonable solution to fix our broken immigration system."
McCain
has been dogged by conservatives objecting to his views on immigration
and campaign finance, among other issues, since he first ran for
Congress in 1982. Republican activists were also turned off by his
moderate stances in the 2000 presidential race.
McCain was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982 and won his Senate seat in 1986.
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