John McCain

Biography

John Sidney McCain III was born in 1936 at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone; his father and grandfather were both four-star admirals. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1958 and became a naval aviator flying ground-attack jets from aircraft carriers.

During the Vietnam War he was wounded in the July 1967 fire aboard USS Forrestal, which killed 134 sailors. In October 1967 he was shot down over Hanoi, badly injured and captured. Held as a prisoner of war until 1973, he was tortured and refused an early release out of turn. After rehabilitation and a year at the National War College he returned to flying, and he retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981.

Settling in Arizona, McCain was elected to the House of Representatives in 1982 and to the Senate four years later, serving there until his death. Investigated and largely cleared as one of the Keating Five in a savings-and-loan influence scandal, he made campaign finance reform his signature cause, which led to the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002. He chaired the Senate Commerce, Indian Affairs and Armed Services committees and was known as a maverick willing to break with his party.

McCain lost the 2000 Republican primaries to George W. Bush, then won the party's nomination in 2008 but lost the election to Barack Obama. In 2017 he cast the deciding vote against a bill to partially repeal the Affordable Care Act. He died of brain cancer at his Arizona home in August 2018.