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 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam later in 1967, he was shot down and badly injured. He endured five and a half years as a prisoner of war, including periods of torture, before he was released following the Paris Peace Accords in 1973.
From the start, McCain and Feingold's efforts were opposed by large money interests, by incumbents in both parties, by those who felt spending limits impinged on free political speech, and by those who wanted to lessen the power of what they saw as media bias. On the other hand, it garnered considerable sympathetic coverage in the national media, and from 1995 on, "maverick Republican" became a label frequently applied to McCain in stories. The first version of the McCain-Feingold Act was introduced into the Senate in September 1995; it was filibustered in 1996 and never came to a vote.
McCain was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2000 presidential election, but was defeated by George W. Bush 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. In late 2007 he staged a comeback, and as of January 2008 was one of the leaders in the race again.