The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, 2/14/8
The possibility now of a John McCain presidency causes me to recall that three generations of John S. McCains, starting with the
grandfather back in World War II, have in different ways crossed my personal life track.
Scruggs and McCain had become close the previous year when Scruggs and Mississippi Atty. Gen. Mike Moore spent weeks on Capitol Hill trying to persuade Congress to approve a national settlement with tobacco companies over health care damages. McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee considering the bill, turned over his office facilities to the two Mississippians to wage their campaign. (In the end, the bill failed under the 60-vote cloture rule.)
Some heavy-hitter guests at the luncheon (certainly, excluding me) raised a pot of money for McCain’s planned bid for the 2000 GOP presidential nomination. As history records, his “Straight Talk Express” campaign fell short, chiefly after George W. Bush’s forces used a smear campaign in South Carolina to stop McCain’s surge.
Magnolia Tribune
