McCain won't campaign against Udall

U.S. Sen. John McCain plans to barnstorm the country on behalf of Republican Senate candidates in states such as Kansas, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Oregon.

However, McCain, R-Ariz., told The Arizona Republic that he intends to sit out the heated Senate battle in Colorado, where incumbent U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo, is in peril. McCain is a longtime friend of the Udall family and considers Udall's father, the late longtime U.S. Rep. Morris Udall, D-Ariz., a congressional mentor.

Asked if he was avoiding Colorado because of his long association with Mark Udall, McCain answered, "and his father, yes."

Mo Udall, who died in 1998, served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1961 to 1991 and unsuccessfully sought the 1976 Democratic nomination for president. For years, he was chairman of the influential House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, on which McCain also sat during his early days in Congress in the 1980s. His son Mark Udall is a first-term senator elected in 2008; his nephew is U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M.

McCain's 2002 memoir "Worth the Fighting For" includes a chapter titled "Mo" in which McCain detailed the kindness and generosity Udall showed him while he was a junior Interior committee member who at a time "barely understood the difference between the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management and couldn't tell a copper mine from a cotton farm."

"I loved Mo Udall. Absolutely loved him," McCain wrote in the book.

Colorado is looking like a possible pickup// for the GOP in its drive to win control of the Senate this year. Republicans need to gain six Senate seats to take over the chamber.

A Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll released last week found a razor-tight Colorado race with Republican challenger U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner leading Mark Udall 43 percent to 42 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. The rest of those asked either were undecided or supporting four minor independent and third-party candidates.

A second poll from Quinnipiac University showed Gardner with an 8-point lead among likely Colorado voters.

However, the Republicans will have to beat Udall without McCain's help because he is focusing on other races.

"Between now and the election, I've hardly got a day off," McCain said. "I'll be campaigning all over Arizona and then all over the country as well. ... I'm not going to go to Colorado."

In other developments:

• McCain said he still has not made up his mind about running for re-election in 2016, but told The Republic, "I'm feeling inclined."

"I'm just making all the preparations and then some time after the first of the year, I'll make a decision," McCain said.

• McCain and Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., questioned Secretary of State John Kerry during his Wednesday appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to discuss the White House strategy against the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Flake urged President Barack Obama to formally request a new authorization from Congress for the use of military force for the anti-ISIS effort. Obama has said he welcomes congressional support, but doesn't need it to hit the extremists. In addition to the president's constitutional authority as commander in chief, the Obama administration is still relying on the anti-terror AUMF that Congress passed in September 2001 after al-Qaida's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"I think five times in the course of this hearing I've said we welcome the effort to work with you to refine the AUMF going forward," Kerry responded.

Flake said the 13-year-old AUMF needs an update and later chastised Kerry for giving a "legalistic" answer about why Obama doesn't need to ask for one.

"The purpose of an AUMF is to give clarity to your allies and your adversaries that the country's united," Flake told The Republic. "They need to be convinced that Congress is behind the president."

• Last week's votes on Obama's plan to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels will be the only ones related to the anti-ISIS operation in the near term.

McCain and Flake voted Thursday for the continuing resolution to keep the government funded that included the Syria measure.

Arizona's U.S. House delegation on Wednesday split on the Syria question. Democratic Reps. Ron Barber, Ann Kirkpatrick and Kyrsten Sinema and Republican Reps. Trent Franks and David Schweikert voted to help the rebels. Democratic Reps. Raúl Grijalva and Ed Pastor and Republican Reps. Paul Gosar and Matt Salmon opposed it.

Salmon criticized the White House ISIS strategy, which is heavy on U.S. airstrikes, as poorly thought out and predicted that U.S. ground troops eventually will be needed, despite Obama's vow to the contrary.

"We should have voted on a full-throated authorization of force and not this half-baked plan that he's put together," Salmon said.

Nowicki is The Republic's national political reporter. Follow him on Twitter at @dannowicki and on his official Facebook page.