The Times and Democrat - McCain stops in Columbia to raise cash for GOP

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Arizona Sen. John McCain came back to South Carolina to raise money for the Republican Party on Thursday night.

McCain, mulling a 2008 presidential bid, gathered with two of his closest South Carolina allies, Gov. Mark Sanford and Sen. Lindsey Graham. South Carolina traditionally holds the first Republican presidential primary in the South.

Graham and Sanford led McCain's 2000 presidential primary election efforts in South Carolina. When McCain lost in this pro-Bush state, some pundits wrote off the political futures of Sanford and Graham, both at the time U.S. House members. Instead, both eventually vaulted to the state's top political jobs.

McCain joked he was glad to be with the senator and governor who "are responsible for my loss in South Carolina."

"I still haven't forgiven them," he said

McCain said he won't decide until early next year whether to run for president again in 2008.

"This is really an effort to raise money for our party and our candidates here in South Carolina. I have been everywhere in the country, literally," said McCain, whose political action committee has distributed more than $1 million to campaigns across the country.

At the fundraiser, McCain talked about Iraq, the 2000 campaign and getting people to vote Republican in this year's elections.

"We are going to work and stop this wasteful pork barrel spending that is mortgaging our children's future and hurting our prospects in November," McCain said. "We've got to stop this spending and get it under control or our base will not turn out next November."

About 100 people attended the event, raising more than $25,000.

McCain may have moved on, but his 2000 legacy in South Carolina remains.

Nearly 50 people joined the South Carolina chapter of the League of the South in picketing McCain's stop at the Lace House, on the grounds of the Gov.'s Mansion complex, reminding people of the Arizona senator's changing stance on the Confederate flag that was flying atop the South Carolina Statehouse dome in 2000, but has since been placed on a pole on the capitol grounds.

During the primary, both Bush and McCain said it was up to South Carolina to decide what happened to the flag. After he bowed out against Bush, McCain returned to the state and apologized, saying he should have taken a stronger stand that the flag should come down.

"He flip-flopped on the Confederate flag and we're going to remind of that," Lourie Salley, a league board member and the group's political director.

The protests didn't bother McCain, who said it was nice to live in a free country.

But Salley, a 51-year-old Lexington lawyer, said the group also doesn't like McCain's stance on illegal immigrants

"If our citizens didn't pay income tax, they'd go to jail," Salley said. "If an illegal immigrant does that, they get amnesty and citizenship."

"I am surprised Gov. Sanford would associate himself with John McCain," Salley said.

But others praised McCain and Graham trying to find a solution to the complex problems immigration creates. They "are not demagoguing the issue to get votes," said Ike McLeese, president of the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce

McCain wasn't the only potential presidential hopeful making a splash in South Carolina Thursday.

SCforMarriage.org, a group pushing voters to support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on the South Carolina ballot in November, said it picked up a $5,000 donation and sponsorship from Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's Commonwealth PAC.

"We cannot afford to shrink from the timeless, priceless principles of human experience," Romney said in a prepared statement. He said he applauds the South Carolina effort and those like it in other states.

A service of the Associated Press(AP)

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