John McCain

Arizona senator, former prisoner of war, and bipartisan maverick who twice reached national tickets.

Overview

Shot down over Hanoi in 1967, McCain endured five and a half years as a POW, refusing early release. Elected to the House in 1982 and the Senate in 1986, he made campaign finance his signature, passing the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 with Russ Feingold, led the 1989 Keating Five reckoning that remade congressional ethics, championed normalization with Vietnam, immigration compromise with the Gang of Eight, and defense oversight. The 2008 Republican presidential nominee, he was known to the end for breaking with his party on decisive votes, including health care repeal in 2017. He died in 2018, days before lying in state in the Capitol.