Headline: Cindy McCain Has a Grudge List...
Is this the report that could trigger a "Dean Scream" from McCain?:
February 3, 2008, news.yahoo.com
During his campaign for the Republican nomination, John McCain has relied on the support of his glamorous second wife Cindy. Yet she has not always been a political asset. A Republican victory in November would bring to the White House a flawed first lady.
In 2004 Mrs. McCain admitted that she had become so addicted to painkillers that she was stealing them from a medical charity she ran.
Yet somehow the McCains have emerged as a potent and durable political partnership. Cindy McCain was at her husband’s side last week as he celebrated the Florida primary victory that has put him at the front of the Republican field.
A former Arizona rodeo beauty queen and daughter of a millionaire Phoenix businessman, Cindy McCain was 25 when she met her future husband at a cocktail party in Hawaii. John McCain was a 43-year-old naval liaison officer travelling with a congressional delegation, his sights already set on a political career.
He was also still married to his first wife Carol, although the couple had recently separated. Carol later attributed the breakdown of the marriage to “John turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again”. McCain fell for Cindy, who was the heir to a brewery distribution business worth millions. For several years afterwards the McCains endured Washington gossip that he had dumped his first wife - who had been crippled in a car accident - in favor of a trophy bride to enhance his political ambitions.
In the late 1980s, federal agents began to investigate gaps in the records of a charity linked to Mrs. McCain. Cindy telephoned her husband, a senator in Washington, and confessed.
She admitted at the time that the episode had “nearly destroyed both of us”. But she underwent treatment and attended meetings of Narcotics Anonymous as part of a deal with prosecutors who dropped charges.
Cindy McCain, now 53, recently admitted that she keeps a “grudge list” as a result of past elections.
The senator's wife claims she has no interest in policy making - “I am not the legislator in this family. He is” - and that she intends to keep busy running her family’s company. As first lady, it is clear that she would play a key role. Acknowledging that McCain had made many enemies in Republican ranks, she added: “The only person my husband can trust is me.” |
