(Reuters) – They disagreed as Republican running mates during the 2008
presidential campaign, and on Friday John McCain and Sarah Palin endorsed rival candidates in the tight Indiana primary to
determine if U.S. Senator Richard Lugar gets a shot at a seventh term.
Arizona March 27, 2010. REUTERS/Joshua Lott
“I join common sense conservatives in endorsing Richard Mourdock to be the next senator
from Indiana,” former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Palin said in a statement released by Tea Party
favorite Mourdock’s campaign.
Veteran Arizona Senator John McCain, who chose Palin as his running mate in a failed
run for the presidency in 2008, came out in support of his colleague, Lugar, who began his first term in 1977.
McCain
recorded a radio ad rebutting Mourdock’s accusation that Lugar supports Democratic President Barack Obama too
much.
“There are some in Indiana claiming Dick Lugar is Obama’s friend – that’s ridiculous,” McCain says in the
ad.
Palin countered that, “Indiana deserves a conservative in the Senate who will fight for the Hoosier State, uphold
our Constitution, and not just go along to get along with the vested interests of the permanent political class in
(Washington) D.C.”
Palin said Lugar’s years in office were “appreciated” but it was “time for the torch to pass to
conservative leadership in Washington that promises to rein in government spending now.”
Lugar, 80, was ahead of
Indiana state Treasurer Mourdock, 60, by single digits in a recent poll. The winner of the May 8 primary faces Democratic
U.S. Representative Joe Donnelly in November.
Since the 2008 election, former McCain campaign aides have said that
Palin sometimes differed with the Republican nominee for president, even though she had agreed before she was picked to
support his positions.
(Reporting By Susan Guyett and Andrew Stern; Editing by Greg McCune and Jackie Frank)
