U.S. Congressman and more children
Living in Phoenix, McCain went to work for his new father-in-law Jim Hensley's large Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship as Vice President of Public Relations,
[52] where he gained political support among the local business community,
[53] meeting powerful figures such as banker
Charles Keating, Jr., real estate developer
Fife Symington III,
[52] and newspaper publisher Darrow "Duke" Tully,
[53] all the while looking for an electoral opportunity.
[52] When
John Jacob Rhodes, Jr., the longtime Republican congressman from
Arizona's 1st congressional district, announced his retirement, McCain ran for the seat as a Republican in 1982.
[55] McCain faced two experienced state legislators in the Republican nomination process, and as a newcomer to the state was hit with repeated charges of being a
carpetbagger.
[52] Finally at a candidates forum he gave a famous refutation to a voter making the charge:
Listen, pal. I spent 22 years in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.[52]
A
Phoenix Gazette columnist would later label this "the most devastating response to a potentially troublesome political issue I've ever heard."
[52] With the assistance of some local political endorsements and his Washington connections, as well as effective television advertising, partly financed by $167,000 that his wife lent to his campaign (which helped him outspend his opponents),
[53] and with support of Tully's
The Arizona Republic (the state's most powerful newspaper),
[53] McCain won the highly contested primary election in September 1982.
[52] By comparison, the general election two months later became an easy lopsided victory for him in the heavily Republican district.
[52]
McCain made an immediate impression in Congress. He was elected the president of the 1983 Republican freshman class of representatives.
[52] He was assigned to the
Committee on Interior Affairs, the Select Committee on Aging, and eventually to the chairmanship of the
Republican Task Force on Indian Affairs.
[56] He sponsored a number of Indian Affairs bills, dealing mainly with giving distribution of lands to reservations and tribal tax status; most of these bills were unsuccessful.
[57] McCain’s politics at this point were mainly in line with President
Ronald Reagan, from issues ranging from the economy to the
Soviet Union;
[58] however, his vote against a resolution allowing President Reagan to keep
U.S. Marines deployed as part of the
Multinational Force in Lebanon, on the grounds that he "[did] not foresee obtainable objectives in Lebanon," would seem prescient after the catastrophic
Beirut barracks bombing a month later;
[52] this vote would also start his national media reputation as a political maverick.
[52] McCain won re-election to the House easily in 1984.
[52] In the new term McCain got the Indian Economic Development Act of 1985 signed into law.
[59] In 1985 he returned to Vietnam with
Walter Cronkite for a
CBS News special, and saw the monument put up next to where the famous downed "air pirate Ma Can" had been pulled from the Hanoi lake;
[60] it was the first of several return trips McCain would make there.
[60] In 1986 he broke ranks again in voting to successfully override Reagan's veto of the
Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act that imposed
sanctions against South Africa.
[61]