Sen. John McCain's once-comfortable lead in Arizona has all but evaporated, according to a new poll that has the underdog Republican presidential candidate struggling in his own backyard.

With less than a week until Election Day, McCain is leading his Democratic rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, by 2 points, 46 to 44, down from a 7-point lead a month ago and a double-digit lead this summer, according to a poll from Arizona State University.

Factor in the 3-percentage point margin of error, and a race that was once a nearly sure thing for McCain is now a toss-up, pollsters say.

Years after he resurrected his political fortunes from the Keating Five savings and loan investigation, John McCain promoted an Arizona land swap that would've benefited a former mentor and partner of the scandal's central figure.

The owners of the Spur Cross Ranch, a dramatic 2,154-acre tract of Sonoran desert just north of Phoenix, in the late 1990s sought to sell it to a developer who planned to build a premier golf course surrounded by 390 luxury homes.

Nearby residents and environmentalists, however, wanted to preserve the area's unusual cacti, stone formations and hundreds of Hopi Indian tribal artifacts.

After opposition surfaced, the developer sought McCain's help in forging a land swap with the U.S. Forest Service — a deal that also would benefit the owners of the ranch, including a company controlled by billionaire Carl H. Lindner Jr., an associate of S&L chief Charles H. Keating.

McCain and an aide pushed for the exchange in more than a half dozen sometimes-testy letters and phone calls up and down the Forest Service's hierarchy, according to former agency officials and correspondence. McCain's office even circulated draft legislation that would have overridden the agency's objection to surrendering national forest land. Ultimately, the deal fell apart.

McCain's behind-the-scenes maneuvering on Spur Cross contrasts with his image as a congressional ethics champion and his pledge — made after the Keating scandal in 1991 sullied his reputation — never to intervene with regulators again.

John McCain's broken promise on intervention with regulators should not come as any surprise. McCain's lawyer during the scandal, John Dowd, claimed that McCain didn't do anything wrong in the Keating Five -- reversing nearly 20 years of self-recriminations and repentance.

Just more evidence that John McCain is more of the same last eight years.

Huffington Post:

William Black -- a deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation during the "Keating Five" scandal that nearly ended McCain's political career -- says the Arizona Republican's chief errors at the time were underestimating the importance of regulation and relying too heavily on slanted advice from captains of industry.

"In the S&L crisis, he took his advice from the worst [kind of] criminal. Charles Keating is the person he went to for his policy advice," Black said. "Now, he certainly is getting advice from Phil Gramm, Carly Fiorina, Rick Davis -- the whole group of economic and top political advisers are lobbyist types. He just doesn't seem to get it, ever, that the advice is going to favor their clients. Even if they just stop being lobbyists, you can't just turn that off instantly. It's their mind state that develops. ... The biggest lesson is that, when you deregulate and de-supervise, you create an environment where control fraud emerges. You hyper-inflate bubbles; you get criminalization." [emphasis added]

But a variety of factors have made Mr. McCain’s chances in Arizona less assured than they ordinarily would seem, which his campaign has acknowledged.

The number of independent voters in Arizona has risen 12 percent since 2004, and those voters have helped send a Democrat to the governor’s mansion and given the party four of the state’s eight Congressional seats — including two in 2006, one in a historically Republican district.

At the same time, Arizona Democrats, like many of their counterparts around the country, have outpaced Republicans in voter registration, adding almost 20,000 voters to the rolls since March, compared with the Republican majority’s 8,600 new voters. The second-term Democratic governor, Janet Napolitano, remains wildly popular.

And Democrats are not going to cede the state to McCain, either:

“John McCain has striking vulnerabilities here,” said Emily DeRose, spokeswoman for the Arizona Democratic Party. “We are going to take him to the mat. We are not giving him a pass in Arizona.”

But an Arizona Republic analysis of his Senate votes on the most divided issues in the past decade shows that McCain almost never thwarted his party's objectives.

The presumptive Republican nominee arguably cast the decisive vote 14 times since 1999 to ensure Republicans got their way, and he had five other close cases where his vote may have made a difference, Senate records show. By comparison, McCain effectively handed Democrats a win on roll-call votes four times in the same period. On one of those occasions, Republicans could still have won if Vice President Dick Cheney had cast a tie-breaking vote.

According to Congressional Quarterly, John McCain sided with President Bush's wishes more than 90 percent of the time in five of the last seven years. The study found that in 2007, John McCain sided with President Bush 95 percent of the time, and with the GOP 90 percent of the time.

The voting pattern seems at odds with the popular narrative that McCain's maverick tendencies make him an unreliable conservative.

"He is a conservative who votes conservative on most issues," said Keith Poole, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego. "By no means is he a liberal or even a moderate."

John McCain: The Bush president Bush Republicans have been waiting for.

The following are excerpts of the story:

Arizona Blacks: Where's McCain?
Politico
By: Jonathan Martin
April 8, 2008

"Oscar Tillman heads the Phoenix area branch of the NAACP and is a former statewide president of the group. He has been a leader of Arizona's small, tight-knit African-American community for decades. So it comes as something of a surprise to learn the name of one person, over all those years, with whom he has never spoken. It is the state's senior senator better known these days as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. John McCain, said Tillman, 'has pretty well zero relationship with the African-American community that I know of.' 'I don't recall him ever attending any function with the NAACP,' Tillman added. 'Each year we send them an invitation [to an annual banquet], and each year they say no.'...

"'In a word, none,' said Ron Busby, president of the Greater Phoenix Black Chamber of Commerce, when asked to describe the senator's relationship with Arizona's African-American community. In the 10 years that the organization, which represents about 300 black-owned businesses, has been in existence, Busby said McCain has never been to any of its events. Busy, who owns a large janitorial services firm that cleans businesses, hospitals and the home of the Arizona Cardinals, said his organization is not a traditionally liberal black group...McCain's discomfort with this kind of touchstone politics underscores a central part of his political persona: He has great difficulty feigning interest in subjects in which he lacks genuine personal interest. Civil rights organizations are hardly unique in this respect. Whatever the constituency or issue, if McCain doesn't care deeply about it, his feelings tend to be obvious over time...

"'As far as I've seen, he has no relationship with the African-American community in Arizona,' said Cloves Campbell Jr., publisher of the Arizona Informant and a Democratic state representative from Phoenix. 'He's never been to the paper,' said Campbell. 'We've called to get interviews, but there has never been any response. I've never talked to him.' Founded in 1971 by Campbell's father, also once a state legislator, the Informant is a weekly that serves the 4 percent of the state's population that is African-American. 'We've had conversations with Kyl several times; we even had [former Rep.] J.D. Hayworth in the office,' said the younger Campbell. Nor has McCain ever been to his church, Campbell said. Tanner Chapel A.M.E. is the oldest African-American congregation in the state and is located in downtown Phoenix."

Last cycle, McCain was attributed as the author of a fundraising e-mail to Renzi supporters in the summer of 2006. With Renzi facing a tough re-election challenge, news broke in late October that Renzi was under investigation by the FBI. Less than a week later, John McCain came to the rescue by recording a robo-call that emphasized Renzi's "honesty and integrity." Local Arizona blogger Eli Blake provided a transcript of the message he received on his voice mail:

This is Senator John McCain. I'm calling to urge you to support my friend, Representative Rick Renzi for Congress. Rick has represented the first district of Arizona with tenacity, honesty and integrity beyond reproach. I work with Rick every day and can report to you his total dedication to the people of Arizona and the United States. Please join me in supporting rural Arizona's workhorse Congressman on November 7. [Paid for and authorized by Rick Renzi for Congress]

Despite the fact that Congressman Renzi was under investigation for over a year, McCain named Renzi as a campaign co-chair, joining a total of 20 lobbyists on the team. McCain acted "surprised" at a press conference in Indianapolis.

TPMmuckraker's Paul Kiel did not seem to buy it, however.

While the timing of the indictment might have been a surprise, it should not have been unexpected. The federal investigation of Renzi was first reported in the fall of 2006. The FBI raided his wife's office in April of 2007.

Back then, as Renzi was pressured to resign from all three of his committee assignments. He did. He was also pressured to resign. McCain refused to join in those calls -- and also expressed a similar ignorance about the case, the details of which had been widely reported.

John McCain: He sure knows how to pick 'em.

Though the fate of the Democratic race to the nomination remains uncertain, one thing is for sure: voters are turning out for the Democratic primaries in number that absolutely shatter previous records — which may be a troubling sign for Republicans looking ahead to the general election.

We may not have a nominee yet, but I'll tell you this, when you look at these numbers from the across the country, one thing is for certain: our Democratic nominee will be competitive anywhere.

STATE: MISSOURI
PREVIOUS RECORD: 528,000
VOTES TONIGHT SO FAR: 778,000 (98% reporting)
% CHANGE OVER PREVIOUS RECORD: +47%

STATE: ILLINOIS
PREVIOUS RECORD: 1,504,000
VOTES TONIGHT SO FAR: 1,809,000 (91% reporting)
% CHANGE OVER PREVIOUS RECORD: +20%

STATE: NEW YORK
PREVIOUS RECORD: 1,575,000
VOTES TONIGHT SO FAR: 1,744,000 (99% reporting)
% CHANGE OVER PREVIOUS RECORD: +11%

STATE: NEW JERSEY
PREVIOUS RECORD: 654,000
VOTES TONIGHT SO FAR: 1,104,000 (99% reporting)
% CHANGE OVER PREVIOUS RECORD: +69%

STATE: MASSACHUSETTS
PREVIOUS RECORD: 793,000
VOTES TONIGHT SO FAR: 1,170,000 (98% reporting)
% CHANGE OVER PREVIOUS RECORD: +48%

STATE: ARIZONA
PREVIOUS RECORD: 239,000
VOTES TONIGHT SO FAR: 314,000 (67% reporting)
% CHANGE OVER PREVIOUS RECORD: +31%

It's still a plurality, but it's still could turn out to be a notable rejection worth mentioning.

Up north, the state of North Dakota goes for Gov. Mitt Romney with a 13 point win over Sen. McCain, 36-23 with 98 percent reporting. Reports show huge turnout for Democrats, nearly twice the expected turnout.

Some news in the Georgia Republican primary, I saw that one of the cable news outlets called the state for Gov. Mike Huckabee. Huckabee managed to pull out the win which had been too close to call for nearly four hours.

Colorado, which is reporting stuffed caucus locations on the Democratic side, has yet to produce a winner for the Republicans.

Two Valley businessmen who made the maximum allowable individual donations to Shadegg's campaign in 2007 also wrote additional $5,000 checks to Shadegg's PAC, Leadership for America's Future. Eleven days later, on June 26, the PAC wrote two identical $5,000 checks to Shadegg.

Normally, such a transfer would not be noticed among thousands of dollars in contributions. But in the same reporting period, Shadegg's PAC received no other contributions and paid out only the $10,000.

Democrats accused Shadegg of using the PAC to avoid laws that prohibit donors from giving more than $2,300 to a candidate's re-election campaign in an election cycle.

Shadegg, who is up for re-election this year, said the contributions are legal because neither he nor the donors were aware that the money sent to the PAC would end up in his re-election campaign. [...]

Officials with the FEC, which regulates election finances, won't comment on the Shadegg donations, saying they can't speak on an issue they might be called to investigate.

Congressman Shadegg, as you may remember, claimed on FOX News during the intra-party election for majority leader to replace former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Sugarland, Tex.), to have a "level of taint" lower than that of his opponents, Rep. John Boehner (R-West Chester, Ohio) and Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Springfield, Mo.).

(Hat tip: Zelph, AZNetroots)

Renzi's retirement announcement adds to a list of GOP Members planning to depart upon the conclusion of the 110th Congress, including Reps. Ray LaHood (Ill.), Deborah Pryce (Ohio) and Chip Pickering (Miss.), as well as former Speaker and Rep. Dennis Hastert (Ill.).

Federal agents raided Renzi's family business in April. Shortly afterwards, Renzi stepped down from his three committee assignments.

State parties will publish their delegate selection rules and clearly explain how to participate in the summer of 2007.

Arizona Democratic Party
2910 North Central Ave
Phoenix, AZ 85012
877-298-6837 (toll free)
602-298-4200 (local)
602-298-7117 (fax)

District-Level Delegates: 37
At-Large Delegates: 12
Pledged Party Leader & Elected Official (PLEO) Delegates: 7
Unpledged Delegates: 11
TOTAL Number of Delegates: 67

Alternates: 9

TOTAL DELEGATION SIZE: 76

System type: Primary

State convention page: Available
State plan: Plan Available (PDF)
State filing form: Not available online. Please contact the state party to receive a copy.

** This information is prepared by the DNC's Office of Party Affairs and Delegate Selection and may be subject to change. For more information, please call 202-863-8000.

On July 15, 1948, the Arizona Supreme Court recognized that right by overruling an earlier decision, making history in the state and our country.

This July 14th is the "Day of Action" for Arizona Native American Right to Vote Day. Suggested activities, thanks to the Arizona Democratic Party:

• Voter registration drive
• Host a 5K Fun Run
• Become a volunteer
• Meet fellow Democrats
• Honor AZ Native American voting history
• Or an event of your choice…

For more information please contact Arista LaRusso at larussoa@dnc.org or call her at the AZ Democratic Party Headquarters 602-298-4200.