`Straight Talker' Puts Spin on Bush

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 6, 2000 | by Sheila R. Cherry, | Diana Ray

Reporters for the conservative Arizona Republic are not among the anointed. Kris Mayes, the only Arizona Republic reporter who ever has been on Straight Talk Express tells Insight she's been banned from the bus since the summer of 1999. Mayes speculates that she fell out of favor with the campaign after writing a series of articles about McCain's famously hot temper. She points out that the New York Times had written similar reports around the same time but, unlike representatives of the hometown paper, the Times writers weren't banished.

After an inquiry from Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz, Mayes was allowed back on the bus -- for two days. Since then she has been reduced to hot pursuit of McCain's "straight talk" in a rental car.

Nelson of the New York Daily News is one of those liberals who has all the access he wants. "I've always said the more you look at him the more you see. He does that," Nelson says. For Mercurio, time will tell what Americans see, now that McCain is in the limelight. Mercurio thinks McCain may have "marched in like a lion" but that he'll "leave like a lamb."