Even in death, John McCain has his daughter’s vote for president.
In a podcast interview released Thursday, Meghan McCain revealed she cast a vote for her dead dad as a write-in for president on her 2024 ballot.
The Republican political commentator and daughter of the late Arizona senator — who died in 2018 after a battle with brain cancer — waxed poetic about politics on the latest episode of “Next Question with Katie Couric.”
“I wrote in my dad,” she told Couric. “People are mad at me. People are so mad at me, Katie. I mean, mad that I didn’t vote either way.”
McCain went on to explain the reasoning behind her decision, saying she could “never” vote for Donald Trump but couldn’t support Kamala Harris either.
“I don’t want anything on my conscience with any of it,” she said. “I can never vote for Trump. I can’t do it. I could never explain it to my children.”
When probed further on why she didn’t vote for Harris, McCain told Couric she “really wanted” the VP to “give me a reason to vote for her and I just felt like it never happened.”
But perhaps even more than Harris, McCain said her inability to vote for the Democratic ticket was largely due to Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
“Look, I’m a pro-life, pretty hardcore conservative woman and Governor Walz was way too extreme for me,” McCain said. “He actually scared me a lot more than she did. He’s very radical on abortion and his record during the 2020 George Floyd protests in Minneapolis…I felt like he was cosplaying as a Republican to try to get my vote.”
John McCain, who served as a U.S. representative and senator from Arizona for over 30 years, also ran an unsuccessful bid for president in 2008. He reduced his role in the Senate after being diagnosed with glioblastoma in 2017, ultimately dying from the disease a year later.
His death still deeply affects his oldest daughter.
“My dad dying gutted me,” Meghan McCain said. “I always feel like there’s life before my dad died and after my dad died. I didn’t become a different person, but it just hardens you and ages you when you lose anyone to brain cancer. You just become a different version of yourself.”
But the 40-year-old mother of two said she’s relieved her father is not here to bear witness to the polarizing political climate.
“There’s a part of me that’s happy he’s not alive to see all this, because it would have broken his heart so badly to see the divisions in the country the way they are.”
