“Hillary Clinton will never, never name me her favorite Republican,” Dr. Kelli Ward told Breitbart News Weekend guest host Matthew Boyle and listeners on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 this Sunday.
Ward used examples of her own voting record in the Arizona State Senate to illustrate why she will be far from Clinton’s favorite. She also evidenced McCain’s favor with a Democrat like Clinton when detailing McCain’s legislative actions such as a recent National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) amendment that would force women into Selective Service.
Ward is locked in a heated primary election battle to win the Arizona seat in the U.S. Senate currently occupied by five-term entrenched politician John McCain. In June 2014 Clinton declared McCain her favorite Republican in Congress during an interview on Good Morning America.
During Sunday’s radio interview, Boyle and Ward discussed the new PPP poll that shows Ward and McCain tied 41-41 when matched up head-to-head.
“I think we’re tied at this point because John McCain keeps doubling down on his bad voting behavior. We know he’s voted for tax hikes and bailouts and massive new spending,” said Ward.
The former Arizona State Senator brought up McCain’s 2010 campaign promise to complete “the danged fence” as he faced his last serious primary election challenger. Six years later, with McCain up for re-election yet again, the fence remains incomplete, the promise unfulfilled. While speaking at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics in April 2014 McCain argued on behalf of illegal aliens, “Why don’t we give them a path to citizenship?”
Ward told radio listeners, “The last time he ran he tried to convince us that he was going to build the danged fence and instead, as soon as he was elected, he went straight to the Gang of 8 amnesty bill, he voted for liberal judges, and ya know just in the last couple of months he sort of doubled down on the bad behavior.”
Members of McCain’s own party in Arizona overwhelmingly voted to officially censure Sen. McCain in 2014 on the basis of an overly liberal voting record.
Ward went after McCain on “social engineering” in the military.
He snuck in an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, something he’s quite well versed in doing, he loves to sneak things into that bill that haven’t been debated. And this is sweeping public policy change. It deserves to be it’s own stand-alone bill. It deserves to be debated on the floor of the House and the Senate as well as within the public domain. And instead he joined with radical feminist groups and really outliers and the Obama administration in trying to join in on the social engineering that’s going on in our military. It’s weakening our military. I want us to have the strongest military in the world. Not because I want us to go out and be the police force of the world, but because I want to follow the Reagan doctrine of “peace through strength.” And when we have the strongest military in the world, the world is a better place.
She continued, “I have a 20-year-old daughter, Katie, and when I think of her being forced to go into combat, especially in the Middle East against the barbarians that are there. Who are basically will be salivating at the prospect of getting their hands on our young women … I have no qualms about women who want to volunteer and who want to go and do whatever they want to do in our military, but to force them to a draft is unacceptable in my opinion.”
McCain’s campaign and the Grassroots Action PAC supporting him have been aggressively attacking Ward, including launching a number of ads against the former State Senator.
Ward went on to describe how her experience makes her the right choice to replace McCain:
I think sometimes people get elected to office and suddenly they think that they’re an expert in everything. I definitely know that that is not the case. I also feel as though I have an immunization against lobbyists. Now as a doctor, we have our own lobbyists. They’re called drug reps, pharmaceutical representatives, and they are beautiful people with some great information who want to sell you something and the lobbyists in politics are exactly the same, beautiful people, great information, but they want to sell you something. Now I’ve learned how to discern what is good and what is just designed for the sale. And I think that helps me a lot to be able to make policy that is excellent rather than that is influenced by special interests or lobbying groups.
Boyle asked Ward to walk the listeners through her record in Arizona’s State Senate.
Ward responded:
I have been honored because people who support Donald Trump and people who support Ted Cruz, all know that we have to change the status quo in Washington, D.C., and for Arizona that means helping Senator John McCain to retire. Now when I was in the State Senate I had a 100 percent profile voting record. I also supported our second amendment vigorously as well as our fourth amendment.
Ward accused McCain of trying to get around constitutional protections such as privacy in the fourth amendment and the right to bear arms in the second amendment. She said:
When I was in the [State] Senate, the last year that I was in, last year, I passed 19, I got 19 bills signed into law. Bills that were designed to shrink the size of government, to lower taxes, to lift the heavy hand of government off the heads of small businesses in particular and let them thrive. I worked on welfare reform, healthcare reform and education reform. All common sense pieces of legislation that took buyin from both parties and the governor, the executive branch, to get signed into law. And that’s what people expect to be done in Washington D.C. and that’s what I can’t wait to bring to Washington to get things done.
Boyle asked Ward what the people can expect should she get elected to replace McCain in the U.S. Senate. She responded:
I am very adamant that we must secure our border, and that includes an all-of-the-above approach which is: build a wall, or build a fence, build a barrier, utilize technology to the fullest. Empower the people who are at the border, who are supposed to be keeping people from coming in, to do their jobs. Have more of those people along the border to keep people from coming into our country illegally and to make sure that people who cross the border illegally understand that there are consequences to their actions rather than rewards.
Ward pointed out that she would have voted against TPP, whereas McCain voted for it. “We have to have an America first policy.”
“This is definitely a campaign of national significance,” said Ward, who pointed listeners to her website and immigration video on Facebook.
Arizona’s primary election will be held on August 30 with early voting beginning almost a month ahead of Primary Election day.
Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana