ABOARD “STRAIGHT TALK AIR” - Republican John McCain, who basically cut off contact with his traveling press corps in the last two months of the presidential race, walked to the back of his campaign plane on Tuesday to say goodbye.

“We’ve had a great ride, we’ve had a great experience, and it’s full of memories that we will always treasure,” the Arizona senator told reporters, who crowded into the aisle and the front of the plane’s press section to hear.

“We’ve spent a lot of time together, some, we’ve been together for almost two years,” he said during a flight from New Mexico to Arizona. “I wish you all every success and look forward to being with you in the future.”

McCain, who appeared subdued, said he was looking forward to the night’s results.

“I’m feeling good and feeling confident about the way things have turned out,” he said, with his wife Cindy at his side.

And that was that. McCain did not take questions, returning instead to the front of the plane, after which a brown curtain was drawn to separate reporters from the candidate and his staff.

McCain developed a brand for himself by holding long sessions with reporters on the back of his Straight Talk Express Bus during both of his presidential campaigns, but he stopped that practice in the last months of the 2008 campaign as his aides sought to keep him to a tighter message.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder (McCain talks to reporters on his plane)

PRESCOTT, Az. - Republican John McCain ended a seven-state cross country sprint in the wee hours of Tuesday morning with an appeal to his home state to send him to the White House.

The 72-year-old senator, whose partially hoarse voice was the only visible sign of the long day he had behind him, expressed confidence in his chances of victory despite polls that show him behind Democratic rival Barack Obama.

“I’m confident because I’ve seen the momentum, my friends,” he told the cheering crowd, roughly 1,500 strong. “All we’ve got to do is get out the vote.”

The enormity of the moment, however, after a nearly 2-year campaign was not lost on his wife, Cindy, who choked up as she introduced her husband.

Obama recently started television advertising in Arizona, sensing weakness in his opponent’s position at home. Several hundred Obama supporters held a counter-rally of their own across the street.

McCain urged the crowd to make sure he carried his stage “in a big way” and promised to end a history of bad luck that previous White House hopefuls from Arizona — Barry Goldwater, Mo Udall and Bruce Babbitt — have experienced.

“Tomorrow, we’re going to reverse that unhappy tradition and I’m going to be the president of the United States,” he said.

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PLANT CITY, Florida - Republican John McCain was taking advantage of the what the land provided to eat his way across Florida while on a bus tour on Thursday.

In Altamonte Springs, the Straight Talk Express made a beeline for Mi Viejo San Juan restaurant where McCain declared to the owner, “We’re hungry.”

Joined by his wife, Cindy, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martinez, McCain tucked into heaping plates of chicken, beef, mounds of rice and fried plaintains.

 
The bus took off again, and this time the destination was Plant City. The one and only stop was at a strawberry produce place called Parksdale Farms whose sign declared, “Welcome to Strawberry Country.”

Repairing to what the store advertised as its “Garden of Eatin,” the McCain group sat down at a picnic table and was served large portions of strawberry shortcake topped with a thick pile of whipped cream.

“This is the kind of small business we have to support,” McCain told reporters afterward as the owner handed him and Cindy bags of Florida oranges for the bus ride.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder (McCain ducks through the window at Parkesdale Farms in Plant City, Florida to order a strawberry shortcake)

NEW YORK - With just a few weeks to go before the U.S. election, the John McCain campaign is still full of surprises.

Cindy McCain, the Arizona senator’s wife, visited the campaign plane’s press section after taking off from New York on Friday to give Halloween candy to startled reporters.

So what, some may ask? Well it was the first time Mrs. McCain, who is generally wary of reporters, has ever ventured to the back of the plane.

Declaring an “autumn surprise”, an aide pulled back the curtain that normally separates the press cabin from the candidate and staff to reveal the potential first lady striding down the aisle doling out smiles and chocolate. The visit was fast and purely social.

When asked how things were going she responded quickly: “It’s going great. We’re right where we want to be.”  Yet polls show her husband lagging behind Democratic rival Barack Obama.

The visit was all the more unusual because of the dramatic decrease in access that reporters have had to McCain and even his staff in recent weeks. The Arizona senator, who used to hold press conferences and informal chats regularly, has cut them off nearly altogether. 

A section of the plane that was designed for press pow-wows was used only once — in July. But glimpses of the “old McCain”, as some reporters describe the senator before his more recent evolution, are beginning to come through. 

On Thursday he rocked the house at a New York dinner with a rare roast of himself and rival Obama, who also spoke.

With jokes about his many houses, verbal gaffes and decision to suspend his campaign during part of the financial crisis, McCain outshined his usually-more polished opponent in delivery, timing, and eloquence. The audience roared.

Earlier in the day his staff had hastily arranged a helicopter ride to New York for McCain when his plane was stuck in Philadelphia because of lengthy airport delays. 

Why the rush? Comedian David Letterman, whose show McCain had skipped a few weeks before in a move that drew extensive ribbing, was waiting for a make-up date.

“Old” McCain or not, he made it to the show, the press followed in the plane, and Letterman was happy.        

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Carlos Barria      
       

With polls showing that Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has a shot at winning North Carolina, Republican rival John McCain is sending his wife Cindy to the state on Saturday to shore up what has traditionally been a stronghold for conservatives.

Obama has made inroads in North Carolina and made the city of Asheville his spot for preparing for the debate held this week. Plus, two out of three polls released this week have shown the Democrat ahead by as many as five points while the third poll showed McCain ahead by 3 points.

Cindy McCain, who has been taking a more prominent role in the campaign in recent days, will serve as the Grand Marshal at the NASCAR Bank of America 500 race on Saturday in Concord, North Carolina, the Republican’s campaign said. 

In addition to seeking those NASCAR voters, McCain’s vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, will be wooing the hockey contingent when she drops the ceremonial first puck in another battleground state, Pennsylvania, as the Philadelphia Flyers face off against the New York Rangers on Saturday.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Robert LeSieur (NASCAR Sprint Cup last month in Delaware.)

BETHLEHEM, Pennsylvania - Republican John McCain’s military history is famous, but the service of his sons is less well known. And until recently, that’s exactly how the presidential candidate and his wife, Cindy, wanted it.
 
But on Wednesday, Mrs. McCain made a rare reference to her sons when criticizing the Illinois senator for his 2007 vote against a war funding bill. McCain has two sons in the military, and one has served in Iraq.  “The day that Sen. Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body,” McCain told a crowded rally in Pennsylvania, an electoral battleground state.
 
“I would suggest that Sen. Obama change shoes with me for just one day and see what it means … to have a loved one serving in the armed forces and more importantly, serving in harm’s way,” she said. “I suggest he take a day and go watch our fine young men…and women deploy, get on those buses and leave with a smile.”
 
McCain also invoked vice presidential nominee Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s son, who recently deployed to Iraq.
 ”We have a lot in common, the McCain family and the Palin family,” she said. “We represent between us the Army, the Navy and the United States Marine Corps.”
 
Obama voted against the funding bill in 2007 but supported a version that included a timetable for withdrawal for U.S. troops from Iraq.
 
The son of Obama’s vice presidential running mate, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, has just been sent to Iraq with the Army National Guard, and will be there for about a year. Obama has two young daughters. 

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Photo credit: REUTERS/Carlos Barria

John McCain adviser Carly Fiorina is offering a new defense of the Republican candidate’s ownership of multiple homes , suggesting that it is due to his hard work rather than his wife’s money.

McCain’s wife Cindy is a wealthy heiress and the couple own between eight and 11 properties depending on how they are counted, according to the Talking Points Memo political blog. McCain responded to a question on the subject last week by saying he wasn’t sure how many properties he owned.

Cue criticism from his Democratic rival Barack Obama, who said it showed McCain was out of touch with millions of Americans struggling to pay mortgage costs.
Fiorina told CNN on Monday: “He is a man who has these blessings and these assets because he’s worked hard all his life. That’s part of the American dream.”

She also pointed out that McCain had a plan to address the home mortgage crisis, noted that Cindy McCain’s investment portfolio was managed by others and argued that Obama, who owns a house in Chicago, was in no position to judge when it came to house purchases.

“Obama got the opportunity to buy a house that he couldn’t afford through his associations with a gentleman named Tony Rezko who’s now in jail,” she said. “If we want to talk about houses and who’s out of touch with the American people we ought to be balanced in that.”

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SEDONA, Arizona - Taking a few days off from the presidential race, Sen. John McCain nonetheless keeps the media on its toes with a daily, early morning trip for coffee.

The Republican presidential candidate, who is staying at his comfortable home in the hills near Sedona, has been driven with staff, Secret Service, reporters, photographer and a television crew in tow to a Starbucks.

There, he quickly gets a cup to go and returns home.

On Friday, the six-vehicle motorcade — four SUVS and two vans– drove him 19 miles roundtrip to a Starbucks in Sedona.

On Thursday, the entourage of nine vehicles made a similar trip to a Starbucks in Cottonwood and back.

Members of the media are kept well away, confined inside the two vans, where they occupy themselves determining what McCain ordered, whether Cindy McCain’s shorts were white or khaki, how much fuel the trips consumed or why the candidate doesn’t just send an aide out for the coffee instead. 

For the record, on Thursday McCain had a cappuccino. Mrs. McCain’s shorts were khaki on Friday. The questions of fuel consumption and why an aide doesn’t fetch the coffee remained unanswered.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Mark Avery (Make-up artist tends to McCain at forum in California)

NEW ORLEANS - A half-sister of Cindy McCain has emerged to speak in an interview with National Public Radio, complaining that she feels hurt when she hears the wife of Republican Sen. John McCain describe herself as an only child.

Cindy McCain’s father was the late Jim Hensley, founder of the Hensley & Co. beer distributorship, from his second marriage, while her half-sister Kathleen Portalski was Hensley’s daughter from his first marriage, NPR said in the exclusive report that aired on Monday.

Portalski, 65, is retired and lives in Phoenix.

Her son Nicholas Portalski contacted NPR after hearing the radio station’s profile of Cindy McCain last week  that described her as an only child.

Cindy McCain often calls herself an only child and has been described as such in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Newsweek and ABC, NPR said.

“I’m upset,” Kathleen Portalski said in the interview with NPR correspondent Ted Robbins. “I’m angry. It makes me feel like a nonperson, kind of.”

Portalski said she saw her father a few times a year, such as Christmas and birthdays, and that he gave her money for school clothes. He also provided money for college tuition to his grandchildren and left Portalski  $10,000 in his will when he died in 2000, NPR said.

The Portalskis say they were disappointed when Cindy McCain inherited the bulk of her father’s fortune. She now serves as chairman of  Hensley & Company, one of the largest Anheuser-Busch distributors in the nation.

Portalski’s son said the family came forward because “we’ve never been recognized, and then Cindy has to put such a fine point on it by saying something that’s not true.”

“It’s just very, very hurtful,” he said.

Hensley was still married to his first wife when he met Marguerite Smith, who would become his second wife and Cindy McCain’s mother, NPR said.

Hensley divorced his first wife and married Smith in 1945, NPR said. Cindy McCain was born in 1954.

Kathleen Portalski told NPR she would like an acknowledgment and an apology.

NPR asked the McCain campaign and Cindy McCain to comment but said neither responded to its requests.

The Portalskis also told NPR they are Democrats.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Chris Keane (Cindy McCain)

WASHINGTON - Americans are hearing a lot more about Michelle Obama than Cindy McCain, but the news they get about the Democratic presidential candidate’s wife is far more negative than what they hear about the spouse of the Republican candidate, according to a study.
 
The study by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press found that 30 percent of Americans said they had heard a lot about the wife of Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama, while only 9 percent reported hearing a lot about Cindy McCain, the spouse of Republican candidate John McCain.
 
Seventy-eight percent said they had heard at least a little about Michelle Obama, while only 54 percent reported hearing at least a little about Cindy McCain, the study found.
 
Michelle Obama has been more heavily covered by the news media than Cindy McCain. Between Jan. 1 and June 15, Obama has been a significant newsmaker in 102 stories, while McCain has appeared in just 28 stories, according to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism.
 
In evaluating the coverage of the two candidates’ wives, about half of those questioned said the news had been a mixture of positive and negative.
 
But people were much more likely to say the news they had been hearing about Michelle Obama was mostly negative. About 26 percent said Obama’s coverage had been mostly negative, while 21 percent said it had been mostly positive.
 
Thirty-one percent said the news about Cindy McCain had been mostly positive, while only 7 percent said it had been mostly negative.
 
Republicans were much more likely to say the news about Obama had been mostly negative. Thirty-three percent found that to be the case, while only 10 percent of Republicans said coverage of the Democratic candidate’s wife had been mostly positive.

What do you think — has Michelle Obama been getting rougher treatment from the news media than Cindy McCain? Or are they being treated equally?

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Photo credit:  Top: Reuters/Chris Keane (Barack and Michelle Obama in Raleigh May 6); Bottom: Reuters/Mike Stone (John and Cindy McCain in Dallas March 4)