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John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) is the senior United States Senator from Arizona and a candidate for the Republican Party nomination in the 2008 presidential election. Both McCain's grandfather and father were Admirals in the United States Navy. McCain also attended the United States Naval Academy and finished near the bottom of his graduating class in 1958. McCain became a naval aviator flying attack aircraft from carriers. Participating in the Vietnam War, he narrowly escaped death during the 1967 Forrestal fire. On his twenty-third bombing mission over North Vietnam later in 1967, he was shot down and badly injured. He became a prisoner of war. He endured five and a half years of captivity, including periods of torture, before he was released following the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. Retiring from the Navy in 1981 and moving to Arizona, McCain soon entered politics. In 1982 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona's 1st congressional district. After serving two terms there, he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Arizona in 1986. He was subsequently re-elected Senator in 1992, 1998, and 2004. While generally an adherent to American conservatism, McCain established a reputation as a political maverick for his willingness to defy Republican orthodoxy on several issues. Surviving the Keating Five scandal of the 1980s, he made campaign finance reform one of his signature concerns, which eventually led to the passing of the McCain-Feingold Act in 2002. McCain was a candidate in the 2000 presidential election, but was defeated by George W. Bush for the Republican nomination after closely contested battles in several early primary states. In the 2008 presidential election, he was the front-runner as the cycle began, but suffered a near collapse of his campaign in mid-2007 due to financial issues and his support for comprehensive immigration reform. He is attempting a comeback as the 2008 primaries begin.
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