McCain makes one last campaign swing

by Jill Zuckman

Grand Junction, Colo. - Accompanied by his 96-year-old mother, Roberta, and a retinue of friends and family, Sen. John McCain made his last campaign trip of the 2008 election, dropping in on this Republican community to pump up the turnout.

"I didn't live a day that I didn't thank God for serving the United States of America," McCain told a cheering crowd spilling out of an airport hangar here in view of the Rockies Western slope. "I owe this country more than it will ever owe me."

Reprising his standard stump speech - without mentioning Sen. Barack Obama - McCain touted his plans to cut taxes, restrain spending and protect voters' retirement funds while reforming Washington and Wall Street.

"I feel momentum, I feel it. We're going to win it. We're going to win it, right here in the state of Colorado," he said to a roar of approval.

In 2004, Mesa County voted more than two to one for President Bush over Sen. John Kerry, giving Bush 41,539 votes to 19,569 for Kerry.

He began his day on the balcony of his Phoenix condo, chatting on a cell phone and sipping coffee before heading to the polls to vote for himself to be president.

Arriving at the Albright United Methodist Church near his home with his wife, Cindy, and son, Jimmy, a U.S. Marine who has served in Iraq, McCain was greeted by cheers and shouts of "We love you!" "Thank you, senator!" and "Go John, go!"

He gave a thumbs up and a smile after casting his ballot and walked out wearing a sticker on his right lapel that said "I voted today."

"In a way, I'm kind of sorry that it's over because it's been exciting," McCain said on ABC's Good Morning America, calling it "one of the most incredible experiences that anyone can have."

At his campaign plane in Phoenix, McCain was greeted by his traveling press corps, which posed for a photograph with him and Cindy McCain on the tarmac.

"We knew it would come to this," McCain said as he walked up to the crowd for a final campaign day and shook hands with reporters and photographers who have traveled with him for months. Afterwards, he and Cindy McCain posed with the staff and advisers that accompanied them all over the country for much of the last year.

McCain spent part of the morning doing satellite interviews in an effort to remind voters to go to the polls and cast their vote for him in places critical to winning the race. He spoke with television anchors in Washington, DC, which reaches Northern Virginia, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Jacksonville, North Carolina, and Indianapolis.

"I think these battleground states have now closed up, almost all of them, and I believe there's a good scenario where we can win," McCain told CBS' "The Early Show" hours before the polls opened. "Look, I know I'm still the underdog, I understand that."