Why Latinos loved John McCain WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP

SAN DIEGO: Now that John McCain has been laid to rest, it’s worth paying tribute to his special relationship with Latinos—especially MexicanAmericans in the Grand Canyon state.

The Arizona senator “got” Latinos, and Latinos “got” him. In ways the national media never understood during his presidential campaigns, McCain and

were blood brothers.

I saw the bond up-close in the late

- Even in nist at the

Latino, the number of Latino bylines at the paper could be counted on two hands. I got grief from whites who thought I was too Latino and Latinos who thought I was too white. In fact, my Latino colleagues and I took so much abuse that the reader advocate playfully nicknamed us “the

so he reached out with a compliment or an encouraging word — something he would do repeatedly over the years.

McCain & Latinos. What a pair these two rascals made. They spoke the same language: God, family, country. They had the same values:

dearly loved this land, and they didn’t hesitate to defend it. And they had the scars and medals to prove it.

For McCain, I bet what drew him to Latinos had something to do with what former President George W. Bush said in the eulogy Republican nomination.

“There was something deep inside him that made him stand up for the little guy, to speak for forgotten people,” Bush said.

Poorly served by both parties, and lost in a black-and-white paradigm that has no room for them, Latinos are the quintessential little guy forgotten

Yet McCain never forgot them. And they never stopped appreciating him, routinely giving him

in his Senate campaigns.

Twice, McCain was recognized for his service to the Latino community by the National Council of La Raza. Murguia who herself noted this fact when introducing McCain at the NCLR’s annual conference in San Diego. I was in the room. Ten feet from where I was sitting, as McCain took the stage, a small group of gray-haired Latino veterans with their military caps on stood at attention and saluted.

As for what drew Latinos to McCain, it was his military service and his heroism as a prisoner of war.

You love your country so much that you send your sons and daughters to defend it, and sometimes all

21-gun salute, “on behalf of a grateful nation.” The who died at Iwo Jima. The son we lost during the Tet Offensive. The cousin who took his last breath outside Kabul. Latinos know this story by heart.

Take it from the to McCain’s son, Jimmy, Arizona businessman Tommy Espinoza. means “godfather.” A is the person you select to raise your kids if something were to happen to you.

That person for the McCain’s was Tommy Espinoza. A friend and

also a Mexican-American Democrat who once headed up a Phoenixbased Latino advocacy group called “

One of just four men that McCain asked to speak at his Phoenix memorial, Espinoza recalled that, for his friend, immigration was a matter of principle. McCain couldn’t abide hypocrisy.

“He would say, ‘You know what? I can’t believe that these families that come from another country, from Mexico, from Central America to work, cutting our grass, feeding us, bringing in the labor force that we need, and now we turn on them?’”

As he left the podium, Espinoza

him and bid farewell to his his close friend.

“My dear friend, he said, as he made the sign of the cross.

McCain spoke to me from the cam-

from Latino voters. He told me it was an honor to represent “so many patriotic and great, wonderful Americans who are the heart and soul of the country.”

No, Senator. With you so often in our corner, the honor was ours.