McCain ends bio tour with bipartisan theme in Ariz.

Arizona Sen. John McCain ended his five-day biographical Service to America Tour on the steps of the Yavapai County Courthouse in Prescott, Ariz., where he ends all his campaigns and about an hour from where he lives -- and where his predecessor in the Senate, Barry Goldwater, started his first senatorial campaign and his 1964 general-election campaign for president. (Encarta map)

The county is strongly Republican, but "McCain avoided the usual kind of stump speech ... instead offering his perspective on the bipartisanship of two legendary Arizona politicians, Barry Goldwater and Mo Udall, and pledging to continue their example," reports Joanna Dodder Nellans of the Daily Courier in Prescott. Goldwater and Udall, a Democratic congressman who ran for president in 1976, were friends, McCain said, because of "their mutual respect for each other's character, devoted service to the state they loved, and patriotism." Nellans adds:

While Goldwater and Udall were famous sons of Arizona pioneer families, "I was 45 years old when I moved to Arizona and finally found a home and the comfortable feeling of belonging to something smaller than a nation," McCain said. "When I entered politics here, I was viewed with resentment by some for my lack of an Arizona pedigree." But Udall took him under his wing.

For more of the story, click here. In an advance story, Nellans noted that Goldwater's uncle, Morris Goldwater, was mayor of Prescott, pop. 34,000, and a founder of the Arizona Democratic Party.