ASU McCain Institute launches ‘maverick’ civic-engagement call
Arizona State University’s McCain Institute for International Leadership will launch an ad campaign Tuesday calling for “mavericks” to get involved in civic engagement, drawing on the late Sen. John McCain’s words and public image to inspire others.
The institute will run ads in five markets and unfurl a banner on the ASU campus in Tempe encouraging people to vote on Nov. 6. After November, the ads will continue, but without the call to vote. The institute expects the broader initiative to continue through 2020.
The nonpartisan campaign, dubbed “Mavericks Needed,” seeks to get people “in the arena,” a new refrain the institute and McCain’s family and supporters have been using since the senator’s death.
Digital ads and billboards will run in Austin, Kansas City, Missouri; Minneapolis, Nashville and Phoenix. A banner calling for mavericks will be placed on display at ASU’s Fulton Center on Tuesday.
Ten billboards will be installed across Phoenix Tuesday that say “mavericks needed” and “being a politician, veteran or prisoner of war not a prerequisite.”
The institute, based in Washington, D.C., opened in 2012 and focuses on security, economic opportunity, freedom and human dignity.
The ads ask people to sign the “Maverick’s Pledge,” which says:
The institute has conducted research since March to try to better understand American sentiment on human-rights issues. The results showed a “significant lack of common understanding and support for the need to protect basic human rights and freedoms in the world,” according to the institute’s press release. Instead, people, especially younger Americans, focus on issues at home and don’t seem to have common language to discuss human rights, the institute said.
Kurt Volker, the executive director of the institute and a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said the campaign is targeting people age 18 to 35 and trying to “build a constituency behind civic engagement and activism without it being partisan.”
The idea is to encourage people to get involved, identify problems and take part in solving them, Volker said, similar to the spirit of engagement McCain championed.
After McCain’s death, the institute has become more conscious of its responsibility to live up to his legacy and carry it forward, Volker said.
“This is one of the ways we wanted to do that, something embracing his role and even his language in being a maverick and his role in standing up for causes greater than himself,” he said.
The main digital ad uses parts of a speech McCain gave to the Munich Security Conference in 2017. Audio of the speech plays over images of firefighters, soldiers and people voting.
Cindy McCain, the late senator’s widow, was named the chair of the McCain Institute on Thursday.
In a news release, Cindy McCain said the country needs a “new generation of mavericks” now more than ever.
“The ideals that John spent his life fighting for weren’t just his, they are American values — and it’s time to fight for them again,” Cindy McCain said. “I am proud of the McCain Institute for continuing John’s work with the Mavericks Needed initiative.”