In the second week of July 2007, a pall settled over the half-empty headquarters of John McCain in an Arlington, Va., skyscraper. The campaign was nearly broke. The top two officials had resigned. Two-thirds of the staff had been fired or left, and those who remained worried the campaign might never recover.
With headlines predicting the end, a small band of loyalists coalesced around McCain.
The new campaign manager, Rick Davis, was on the phone with donors in every state, asking them to hang on. Mark Salter, McCain's aide of nearly two decades, walked from desk to desk at headquarters persuading core staffers not to bolt.
Strategist Charles Black, McCain's longtime friend and a veteran of every Republican presidential campaign since Ronald Reagan's 1976 bid, dropped in to remind the staff that Reagan had survived a similar implosion.
From California, consultant Steve Schmidt was on the phone with McCain, getting him focused on the path ahead. Media advisor Mark McKinnon, watching from Austin, Texas, as the team he'd assembled collapsed, called in to say, "I'm still here."
Toward the end of the week, Davis gathered the remaining staffers in an empty room. Some of them sat on boxes filled with McCain signs. The candidate thanked them for staying. His words caught in his throat when he paid tribute to Salter, who was painfully close to the departed advisors but bound to McCain with brother-like loyalty. The Arizona senator tried out a now-familiar laugh line -- "In the words of Chairman Mao, it's always darkest before it's totally black."
Then McCain, his son Jimmy and Salter headed to New Hampshire to face dozens of reporters. "They're really coming up to see if you're going to get out of the race," Salter told McCain, to buck him up. "Just keep the schedule. Just go do your thing."
The 'Sedona five'
The journey from that moment to capturing the Republican nomination Tuesday night was propelled by many factors beyond McCain's control. McKinnon said it was like drawing to an inside straight over and over.
The Iraq troop "surge," which McCain had advocated, gained support. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee emerged as a serious candidate and beat former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Iowa. Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani essentially pulled out of New Hampshire, clearing McCain's way. Romney abandoned South Carolina, helping McCain to victory there, which gave him the momentum to win Florida.
