ROSWELL, N.M. — John McCain's 20-hour sprint to election day began Monday as most of his mornings have for a year and a half: with a stroll out of his hotel, his wife at his side, a brief wave with one hand and an enormous coffee cup in the other.
This time it was the sunlit front entrance of the Biltmore in Miami beneath towering palms. He'd caught just a few hours' sleep after a dizzying night where he traveled from a somber town hall in New Hampshire to a throbbing midnight rally at a Miami arena.
He punched out each of Monday's stops in about 30 minutes: a parking lot near Tampa Bay; airport hangars in Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Indiana and New Mexico; and a pavilion in Nevada. He greeted supporters like old friends, reading off the signs they held announcing themselves as variations of "Joe the Plumber."
"Friends, I'm so touched by this turnout, I'm so grateful for this expression of support. I thank you," McCain told a crowd of 5,000 in Blountville, Tenn., near the border with Virginia. He stretched his arms out as he singled them out:
"There's Kelly the nurse! . . . and here's Janet the professor, and Rick the preacher -- Rick the preacher. Thank you Rick! They're all here! Army wives! Jeff the retired soldier. They're all here! Coal miner's daughter. Thank you! Thank you very much."
His top aides stretched their legs on the tarmac, cellphones pressed to their ears as they called headquarters for the latest updates.
On the hops between airports, McCain was surrounded by aides who'd traveled with him for two years and his closest friends, including four Senate colleagues and the former governor of Pennsylvania, who urged him to rest, making sure he ate fried chicken and peach cobbler and soothed his hoarse voice with lozenges.
His crowds were hopeful -- eager to prove the predictions of "the media" wrong. At an outdoor rally in Indianapolis where the jets roaring in forced McCain to stop several times, Jeanette Schriner of nearby Fishers was unnerved by all the accounts writing McCain off.
"I find the press quite depressing," said the 47-year-old mother, who has stopped watching the campaign on television. "But I do feel like things are tightening, and I do feel like people like myself are going to come out and vote tomorrow and we haven't been given the respect we deserve."
