The J.D. Hayworth Revolution Fizzles Out

Situated in the ballroom of a northern Scottsdale resort, J.D. Hayworth’s election party was not the passionate populist uprising the campaign may have wished for.

The parking lot outside of the J.D. Hayworth Election Party last night projected confidence. The window of a red SUV blared “McCain = Amnesty” in white letters. A sedan nearby read, “JD!” and “Victory” in bold red writing.

But inside it was a different story. Situated in the subterranean ballroom of a northern Scottsdale resort, J.D. Hayworth’s election party was not the passionate populist uprising the campaign might have wished for. Rather, it was a small gathering – less than 200 I would guess – of Hayworth’s most loyal supporters, all without any delusion of victory.

For a majority of the evening, there were no chants or “Don’t Tread On Me” flags, just polite conversation and nostalgia for the campaign gone by. A large collage stood out front, featuring photo after photo of Hayworth smiling and giving the thumbs up. On a projector screen inside the ballroom, a nostalgic slideshow (with patriotic country music, of course) documented Hayworth’s campaign up and down the state, including his trip to the border with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who got raucous applause.

A few hours into the party, the anticlimax arrived. A local news anchor on the big projector screen reported that McCain was leading Hayworth 2 to 1 and CNN was calling it for the incumbent senator. A single, surprised shout rang out. Otherwise, there was quietly disappointed murmuring. The inevitable was now official.

A few minutes later, though, John McCain’s beaming face appeared on screen and all hell broke loose. The ballroom exploded in anger. A chorus of relentless, hysterical screaming began, as if a decade of frustration was boiling over all at once. The most common refrain was “liar!” (McCain: “I will fix the border!” Screams: “Liar!” McCain: “Thanks for your support” Screams: “Liar!” McCain: “Good evening, friends.” Screams: “Liar!”) Another common refrain was the “shut up!” as if yelling it loud enough would finally, once and for all, make McCain stop talking. One white-haired, red-faced old woman was particularly loud. She began chanting “RINO! RINO! RINO!” at the sight of McCain and about half the room joined in. After a few minutes of mayhem, though, the television screens went blank and people resumed their polite conversations, waiting for Hayworth’s concession speech.

In this more calm state, the Hayworth supporters I chatted with weren’t angry with McCain, just fed up with him. They had McCain fatigue. A mustachioed Scottsdale man told me, “Why doesn’t he just retire? He’s 74. He should move to Sedona.” Only the matter of “amnesty” got the blood boiling a bit.

National politics were hardly discussed last night. Though Arizona has been in the national political spotlight for several years – first McCain came close to the presidency, often basing his national campaign from Arizona, SB1070 passed earlier this year, and both the National Review and Harper’s Weekly have had lengthy recent articles just about Arizona politics – there was little sense of Hayworth being part of a larger, national struggle. President Obama and socialism never came up in my brief conversations, but McCain and illegal immigration came up constantly. When I mentioned to a J.D. supporter that CNN had a reporter at the McCain rally, he was surprised. When I asked some self-proclaimed tea partiers if they were upset that Hayworth had not been endorsed by Arizona’s tea party groups, they were hearing about the slight for the first time. Overall, the Hayworth fans I spoke to were not living for politics; politics just happened to be in their lives for the moment. (After a year of living in Washington D.C. this was, I must confess, a refreshing formulation.)

The party attendees were almost all old and white: septarians and sestarians in golf shirts and sandals. There was some local flavor, like cowboy boots and big belt buckles, but mostly the crowd was well-off suburbanites from Scottsdale and Sun City. It was, in other words, a portrait of the 2010 Republican Party.

But, to my surprise, there were a few Hispanic supporters of J.D. – about four, by my count.

Two of the Hispanic supporters, an older couple, were die-hard J.D. fans. They had actively supported Hayworth since 2007 and had been active in tea party politics since 2008, when the Tea Party Express first arrived in Phoenix. They started a group called the “Legal Hispanics Tea Party,” which they ran out of South Phoenix, the Valley of the Sun’s most Hispanic neighborhood. Since then, the couple had spent a lot of their time protesting a wide variety of things, including The Phoenix New Times weekly newspaper and Mayor Phil Gordon.  The husband, the mastermind behind all their protests, had a long hippie-like ponytail, exemplifying David Brooks’ theory that the Tea Party and the protesters of the 1960s have a lot in common.

Last night, though, the latest American revolution was floundering; Hayworth had let it down. This year was conservatives’ best shot in decades to unseat McCain and send an unmistakable message of reform to the Washington elite. For most of 2010, the necessary momentum was there: indeed, several conservative insurgents won last night in local Arizona elections. Yet, J.D. Hayworth was trounced.  By last night, it was painfully obvious that the man of the hour was not a good fit for the role of anti-Washington insurgent.

At the end of the evening, Hayworth came out for the first time, gave a short, generic speech calling for his supporters to stay involved in politics. Then Hayworth and supporters disappeared, walking back to the parking lot and into the night.