EDONA, Ariz. - Senator John McCain will announce today that he will halt his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, a campaign official said last night.
McCain, who suffered major setbacks in Tuesday's primaries, is expected to withdraw from the race. He canceled campaign events, a senior aide said, in a sign that his candidacy was near an end.
During the last few weeks of the campaign for the Republican nomination, McCain and Texas Governor George W. Bush, two men who began the contest calling each other ''friend,'' have spoken like bitter enemies. The candidates and their surrogates have sniped at, undermined, complained about, and wounded each other, the acrimony drowning out issues and policy.
So now that Bush's nomination and McCain's withdrawal seem probable, will the two make up?
Probably, said Bush.
''Soon, our party will unite and turn to the main task at hand: ending the era of Clinton,'' the governor told supporters Tuesday night.
Not so fast, replied aides to McCain.
''I saw two reformers on the early morning news shows this morning, both of them brand new to the reform movement, in Al Gore and George Bush,'' said McCain's political director, John Weaver. ''They are not very credible message carriers.''
The question of a possible reconciliation between the two Republicans concerns more than their personal relationship: It may shape their political fortunes. Each candidate appealed to very different sectors of the electorate in this campaign. Bush, usually considered a moderate Republican, courted and won conservative voters. McCain cornered the market on more moderate voters, throwing around some strong criticism of the party establishment in the process. Without both groups of voters, Bush will have a difficult time in the general election. And for McCain, reconciliation with Bush might provide him with a more prominent place in the GOP than he has held in the past.
On Saturday, when McCain was asked whether he still considered Bush a friend, he waited 11 long seconds, his jaw grinding away, before he answered with an unconvincing yes. McCain was incensed at $2.5 million worth of advertising, placed by Texas business associates of Bush, criticizing McCain's record on the environment. Later that day, he went a little further.
''I didn't say I'd talk to him. There's all kinds of friends,'' McCain said.
On Monday, his chances of clinching the nomination growing distant, McCain, who does not speak off the record, called Bush ''a combination of the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow,'' and threw in a swipe at Bush's communications director for good measure. ''And Karen Hughes is behind the curtain,'' he said.
After McCain began running television ads during the South Carolina contest comparing Bush to President Clinton, Bush complained, jaw clenched, about his opponent taking the ''low road.'' He abruptly dropped the friendly rhetoric, including the word ''buddy,'' he sometimes used to use to describe McCain.
And, as recently as nine days ago, Bush tried to dodge questions about how he felt about his opponent. Asked by a reporter on March 1 whether he still considered McCain a friend, Bush equivocated. ''I consider that kind of campaigning to be unnecessary,'' he said of the phone calls McCain campaign workers made to voters critical of Bush's visit to Bob Jones University.
When reporters pressed a second time, he said: ''I know what the question was. You must think I'm getting old. And the answer was, I try not to take things personally in politics.''
But with his dominant showing in Tuesday's primaries, aides say Bush is aware of the immediate need to court the voters who were so enthusiastic about McCain. One Bush pollster said he wished he had been able to pose an exit poll question to McCain voters nationwide: What was it that you liked about his candidacy so much? And how is that going to affect your vote this fall?
''The question is, where are these voters going to find a home?'' pollster Mark C. Allen said.
That concern even showed up in Bush's victory speech, in which he commended McCain for his ''commitment to reform.''
And yesterday, Bush nearly thanked McCain for having made him a sharper candidate, calling himself ''battle-tested.''
Bush said he hoped he could convince McCain to ''team up and let's win. Let's beat Al Gore.'' But he admitted it would take time and energy to repair his relationship with the Arizona senator, given the tenor of the last 37 days.
''At the appropriate time, I will be talking to John if he wants to and reaching out to the people he energized,'' Bush said.
McCain's aides, who know their candidate has something Bush needs, were in no mood to make nice yesterday.
En route to Cottonwood, Ariz., to meet McCain, who was to spend the day resting and weighing his options with family, senior staff members and friends at his ranch, some aides were digging in their heels, determined not to go gently.
Everything is still an option, they said: not just staying in the race or withdrawing, but also continuing in another way, though they were vague about what that might include. Aides hinted at a third party option, a possibility that has been batted about in recent weeks, but which McCain has taken great pains to quash.
Political strategist John Weaver took care to leave the senator's choices open, however.
''I can't conceive of John jumping to the Reform Party,'' Weaver said. ''But I can certainly see him being pushed into it.''
Weaver said he had not raised the third party idea with McCain, and that, to his knowledge, no calls have come from Reform party officials.
If McCain were to throw his support behind Bush, it is likely the senator would want to extract concessions from the governor, some aides said. Particularly on the issue of campaign finance reform, the issue which at times defined McCain's candidacy. That might mean Bush would swear off soft money, and encourage Vice President Al Gore to do the same, and move some of McCain's priorities higher up in his agenda.
Aides seemed to be enjoying the nebulous nature of the situation yesterday.
''Where there is chaos, there is opportunity,'' Weaver said.
But Republican strategist and Bush supporter Tom Rath said the men have little choice but to reconcile.
''They will realize the alternative is Al Gore, whom neither of them wants,'' he said. ''They will have to sit down and talk to each other. They started out as friends and stayed friendly through New Hampshire. We're talking about four or five weeks out of much longer political relationship, and they can find ways to patch that up.''
And if they don't reconcile, and McCain exits, moderate voters, without an alternative to Bush, will move to the Texas governor anyway, Rath said.
