McCain on LR visit gains cash, barbecue
Posted on Saturday, April 26, 2008
Capping a five-day circuit of supposedly “forgotten” places, John McCain swept through Little Rock on Friday for cash, barbecue and a meeting with about 50 black college students.
The presidential candidate’s visit was designed, like others this week, to portray him as a Republican willing to meet with all voters. And during his roughly three-hour tour, he got all kinds.
“We do feel like it’s part of a political campaign to gain the African-American vote,” said 24-year-old Arkansas Baptist College student Donald Smith. “Nevertheless, we’re glad he came. We’re doing him a favor, but he’s doing us a favor, as well.”
McCain, who had former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee by his side throughout the day, is the presumptive Republican nominee. Neither man would entertain much talk about a potential Republican ticket. Huckabee quit his presidential bid when McCain swept four states March 4, guaranteeing he would be the party’s nominee.
So while his Democratic foes still are fighting a tough primary battle, the senator from Arizona has begun looking to November.
Arkansas, he acknowledged, is a tossup state. It has backed every winning candidate since 1972. Democrats dominate its statehouse and congressional delegation.
“In this campaign, I intend to go everywhere,” McCain said to reporters after speaking at the college. “I want to make sure that every American knows that I’m competing for every single one of their votes, no matter where they live, no matter what their party identification is.”
McCain had just emerged from a 40-minute question-andanswer session with the college students.
Many of them were part of the school’s mentoring program, which McCain and Huckabee praised but suggested ought not need federal funding to expand.
Noting the contingent of national media following Mc-Cain’s trail, Smith and others said that his Little Rock visit surely will at least boost the college’s profile.
It also should help his campaign account. With onlookers straining to see, McCain held a fundraiser at the Capital Hotel, which drew about 150 and is expected to have raised more than $ 200, 000.
As donors filed into the hotel, members of the Arkansas AFL-CIO stood outside holding banners to promote pro-labor legislation. Two of the roughly 20 protesters held up a 4-by-8 banner just outside the hotel’s restaurant windows.
The curtains closed.
“I’m not surprised,” 23-yearold Kris Pierpont, a painter at the Russellville nuclear plant, said as he held up his end of the giant sign. “They just didn’t want to see us.”
Across the street, District Judge Gibbs Ferguson of Mc-Gehee had just left a conference at the Peabody Hotel. He waited several minutes with his wife, Anne, for a chance to see McCain, but the candidate was already inside.
“I was going to holler at him and tell him he had two votes,” Ferguson said.
But if Ferguson couldn’t reach out to McCain, a warm crowd at the Whole Hog Cafe could.
Standing outside the barbecue restaurant, Kyle Luttrell fidgeted with a baseball he wanted autographed.
Brittney Cozart, who works at the neighboring Alltel Wireless store, kept checking for McCain’s arrival, camera in hand.
Both waited for about 90 minutes until the blue “Straight Talk Express” campaign bus pulled up in front of the restaurant, about 1: 30 p. m. By then, the crowd in front of the packed restaurant had grown to more than 30, not including the media.
After McCain went inside, Luttrell showed off a freshly inked signature. “I hope to get every modern-day president’s signature on a baseball,” he said.
Cozart got some close-ups. “I really like his beliefs,” she said. “A lot of candidates today do not have the old-world, conservative beliefs that I believe in. And he does.”
Inside, tables began to fill.
“When he leaves, everybody’s going to leave,” one of the restaurant’s busy busboys said to another.
But at least one table was easy enough to clean: The campaign had reserved a table, but McCain, after touring the kitchen, had to grab his food to go.
At the college, McCain said his plan for a summertime gastax holiday would help motorists cope with soaring gas prices, even if for a short while.
Skeptics have said an 18. 4-cent-per-gallon moratorium wouldn’t do much to help and would instead cost billions of dollars in needed highwaybuilding funds.
“I’d love to tell you that money is well spent. But a lot of it’s not,” McCain said.
With his tax break, he said, maybe more Americans could “take a vacation. School’s out. Maybe a chance to take a little trip.”
Pressed by the crowd to promise money for the kind of mentoring program for adolescents and teenagers that Arkansas Baptist began in February, McCain hesitated. He said such programs rightly rely on community-based volunteer efforts. Pouring federal money into them would change the “essence” of initiatives like the Our Kids Program, which in Little Rock was inspired by the shooting death of a 6-year-old girl.
“The first thing I would do is try to make this program famous,” he said, adding that “of course” his administration would examine funding for it.
Helping him out, Huckabee suggested that one of the best ways to help would be by lowering taxes.
“The worst thing that could happen right now is to take even more money from the people’s discretion and put it in the hands of government and hope that it gets back to the right people,” Huckabee said.
Handed the microphone by a fellow program participant, Little Rock police Lt. Johnny Gilbert said any amount of federal assistance could help.
“If we don’t spend the money here,” he said. “We’re going to spend it incarcerating. And I think that’s a bad choice.” Information for this article was contributed by Jake Sandlin of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
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