By Ann Gerhart
The Washington Post
Tucson — Martha McSally is drinking a Negra Modelo from the bottle at a Mexican joint here after another long day running in 103-degree heat for the honor of serving in an institution with a 13 percent approval rating.
She is the first female U.S. fighter pilot to fly in combat and the first woman to command a fighter squadron. As a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, she sued then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over the military requirement that servicewomen wear Muslim garb when off base in Saudi Arabia and got it changed.
The president’s debate claim collapses when the full record of meetings and discussions is examined.
It is in her constitution to charge hard at the very thing she’s been told is impossible and out of line.
Ron Medvescek / For The Washington Post
Now, in her first bid for political office, she is going after the congressional seat that would seem most out of reach. Running as a Republican, she aims to replace the beloved Gabrielle Giffords, the Democratic congresswoman who was gunned down outside a Safeway on a Saturday morning while meeting with constituents, a crime that lacerated this community and horrified the nation.
To do that, McSally has to defeat the man who won a special election in June, Ron Barber, who was Giffords’s district director and was shot in the head that day.
What kind of person runs against that legacy?
“Pioneer, leader, servant” is how the retired colonel, 46, introduces herself to those she seeks to represent in one of America’s flintiest swing districts.
“Am I nuts?” is what she first asked herself after plunging into a world that is as chaotic as the military is structured.
“The special election was about the legacy, and November is about the best representation for this district,” is what she had answered at the last event, when a supporter at a small meeting gingerly brought up “the Gabby factor.”
Now, at dinner, with her elderly dog at her feet and her nephew/driver/yard-sign toter eyeing her leftovers, McSally relates how she went from being a professor in Germany in January, teaching a course on the Arab Spring, to being a candidate a week after Giffords resigned.
It is a brash story about the advice she sought, heard and then ignored — to come home to the house she bought in 1994 when stationed here at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, to put down her roots and run for school board or be a precinct chairman.
Don’t do it, you can’t be successful, you’ll be labeled a loser, she was told. Don’t blow your chances, with that impressive résumé and smarts and personal charisma, to be a political star. Take the conventional path.
“I had nothing to lose; I already had quit my job. So I said, ‘Now, what do I have to do? Probably file some paperwork, right?’ ” McSally, who is single, says with a grin.
Also: Paton outraises Kirkpatrick as CD1 campaign tightens up/Arizona Daily Star
Dist. 11 Senate candidates Melvin, Holt solutions/InMaricopa.com
Political TV ad buys approach $30 million in Arizona, and still counting/Cronkite News
