Facing the toughest re-election battle of his career, Arizona Sen. John McCain enlisted a rising star of the Republican Party in a bid Friday to lock down support among conservative primary voters.
Just two years after he emerged victorious in the Republican presidential primary contest, McCain now faces a stiff primary challenge for the party's Senate nomination from radio talk show host and former congressman JD Hayworth who claims McCain is not conservative enough.
Some Arizona conservatives have long been skeptical of the four-term senator who lost the 2008 presidential race to Barack Obama. Since the last election, McCain has tacked to the right in his Senate votes, but his detractors bring up his past work with Democrats in support of issues including campaign-finance and immigration reform.
Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who became an overnight Republican star with his upset victory in a January special election to fill the seat held for decades by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, made his first campaign trip as a senator when he visited Arizona to support McCain.
The appearance also marked a key test of Brown's popularity among Republican activists and his ability to raise contributions for candidates after he recently broke with the party's Senate leadership to side with Democrats and a handful of moderate Republicans in supporting a jobs bill.
Brown joined McCain at Grand Canyon University, a small Christian school in Phoenix.
"We need good people, honest people, people who are greatly respected, people who are not out for themselves," Brown told a crowd of about 1,000 people.
"And he's right here," he said of McCain.
Pacing the stage, McCain stressed familiar themes, saying he opposes President Barack Obama's health care bill and abortion, worries about the national debt, and is committed to creating jobs and keeping people in their homes.
He spent most of his time _ and got his loudest applause _ on health care.
"We Republicans, like the majority of Americans, are saying to the president: 'Stop and start over,'" McCain said.
Brown won his Senate seat with the help of national Republicans, grassroots conservative "tea party" activists and an array of special interest groups. Some of those supporters turned against Brown after his Feb. 22 vote on the jobs bill, calling him a traitor and lambasting him online.
As a nationally popular Republican representing a left-leaning state, Brown walks a fine line between pleasing his party's base and positioning himself for re-election in 2012.
Brown's visit is intended to help McCain galvanize support on the right. Even as some former supporters turn on Brown, he remains popular in the Republican Party after his victory embarrassed Democrats.
Brown's victory gave Republicans the crucial 41st vote they need to block Democratic legislation in the Senate. On his first opportunity to do so, however, he was one of five Republicans to allow the jobs bill to advance. It later passed the Senate on a formal vote with support from 13 Republicans.
The Massachusetts senator is in Arizona for campaign stops with McCain in Phoenix on Friday and Tucson on Saturday, as well as a fundraiser in the Phoenix suburb of Scottsdale.
McCain was one of Brown's earliest supporters when his chances in Massachusetts looked like a longshot and he struggled to find footing in the race.
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