He was born in the Panama Canal Zone, served in Vietnam, and cemented his legacy in Arizona and Washington, DC, but John McCain was no…
He was born in the Panama Canal Zone, served in Vietnam, and cemented his legacy in Arizona and Washington, DC, but John McCain was no stranger to the Big Apple.
In the fall of 2001, with the city still reeling from the 9/11 attacks, McCain and then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani sat side by side at Yankee Stadium as the Bronx Bombers battled McCain’s home-state Arizona Diamondbacks in Game 3 of the World Series.
The maverick Republican senator also had a hand in putting Giuliani’s successor, Mike Bloomberg, over the top in an election held just days after the game, Bloomberg wrote in a remembrance of McCain.
“I was lucky to have John in my corner when I first ran for mayor of New York City in 2001,” Bloomberg wrote Saturday on Bloomberg.com . “I didn’t get many endorsements in that race from local politicians, let alone national ones. But John came to New York and campaigned for me on the streets of Brooklyn.”
So influential was McCain’s sway that Bloomberg publicly told him, “I got elected because of you,” at a meeting in 2008 when McCain was back in New York campaigning in his own bid for the White House.
But the longtime GOP standardbearer’s oldest city connection predates his political career.
As a naval aviator, McCain flew several missions off of the USS Intrepid aircraft carrier beginning in 1960.
That ship is now moored off of Manhattan’s West Side, and earlier this year, the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum honored McCain with its Intrepid Lifetime Achievement Award.
