page_title: House and Senate career of John McCain, until 2000
section_title: A maverick senator
hierarchical_section_title: House and Senate career of John McCain, until 2000 / U.S. Senator / A maverick senator
caption_attribution_description: U.S. Senator John McCain delivers the keynote address during the Pentagon observance of National POW/MIA Recognition Day ceremony.
context_page_description: John Sidney McCain III retired from the United States Navy in April 1981. His last four years in the service had been spent as the Navy's liaison to the United States Senate. He moved to Arizona with his new wife and, aided by a job from his father-in-law and the contacts it gave him, soon began a new career in politics.
  In 1982, he was elected as a Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona's 1st congressional district. After serving two terms there and making an impression as a rising political figure, he was elected U.S. Senator from Arizona in 1986. He became one of the senators entangled in the Keating Five scandal of the late 1980s, but survived it and was re-elected in 1992 and 1998.
  While generally adhering to American conservatism, McCain established a reputation as a political maverick for his willingness to defy Republican orthodoxy on several issues. In reaction to his Keating Five experience, he made campaign finance reform one of his signature concerns. He was also a leader in normalizing diplomatic relations with Vietnam.
context_section_description: Having survived the Keating Five scandal, McCain made attacking what he saw as the corrupting influence of big money on American politics his signature issue.
  Starting in late 1994 he worked with Democratic Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold on campaign finance reform; their McCain-Feingold bill would attempt to put limits on "soft money", funds that corporations, unions, and other organizations could donate to political parties, which would then be funneled to political candidates in circumvention of "hard money" donation limits.  From the start, McCain and Feingold's efforts were opposed by some of the interests targeted, by incumbents in both parties, by those who felt spending limits impinged on free political speech, and by those who wanted to lessen the power of what they saw as media bias.  On the other hand, it garnered considerable sympathetic coverage in the national media, and from 1995 on, "maverick Republican" became a label frequently applied to McCain in stories.  He had used the term himself, and one of the chapters in his 2002 memoir Worth the Fighting For would be titled "Maverick".  The first version of the McCain-Feingold Act was introduced into the Senate in September 1995; it was filibustered in 1996 and never came to a vote.
  In 1993, McCain opposed military operations in Somalia, saying it was "an unfocused mission that lacks an objective"; after 18 American deaths in the Battle of Mogadishu, he introduced a resolution to bring U.S. forces home immediately, but it was defeated in the Senate.  McCain similarly opposed Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti in 1994.  He was initially opposed to U.S. military involvement in the Bosnian War, voting against the George H. W. Bush administration on a 1992 resolution that would have authorized "demonstrations of force" in conjunction with the Operation Provide Promise humanitarian relief effort there.  McCain's view changed after the 1995 Srebrenica Massacre, and he voted in favor of the resolution authorizing the 1995 NATO bombing in Bosnia and Herzegovina against the Bosnian Serb Army.
  McCain attacked what he saw as pork barrel spending within Congress, believing that the practice did not contribute to the greater national interest.  Towards this end he was instrumental in pushing through approval of the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, which gave the president the power to veto individual expenditures. Although this was one of McCain's biggest Senate victories, the effect was short-lived as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the act unconstitutional in 1998.  In a more symbolic attempt to limit congressional privilege, he introduced an amendment in 1994 to remove free VIP parking for members of Congress at D.C. area airports; his annoyed colleagues rejected the notion and accused McCain of grandstanding.
  He was the only Republican senator to vote against the Freedom to Farm Act in 1996, saying that it catered to special interests rather than representing true reform of farm subsidies policy. He was one of only five senators to vote against the Telecommunications Act of 1996, on the grounds that it put the economic interests of corporations ahead of those of consumers.
  McCain became chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in 1995, and would hold that position into 1997.  McCain's visibility was increased by the 1995 publication of Robert Timberg's well-received The Nightingale's Song, a joint biography of five graduates from the Naval Academy who had served in Vietnam and whose subsequent public fame and problems illuminated the role of Vietnam and the military in American life.  At the start of the 1996 presidential election, McCain served as national campaign chairman for the highly unsuccessful Republican nomination effort of Texas Senator Phil Gramm.  After Gramm dropped out, McCain endorsed eventual nominee Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, and was again on the short list of possible vice-presidential picks.  McCain formed a close bond with Dole, based in part on their shared near-death war experiences; he nominated Dole at the 1996 Republican National Conven
caption: McCain at the Pentagon in 1997.
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