here appear to be two McCains running for president.
One is the John McCain who has ignited much of the electorate with his almost refreshing anti-establishment insurgency campaign, the candidate who has fought the big tobacco lobby and is fighting to overhaul campaign finance laws.
His campaign style has appealed to the more moderate Democrats and independents who may see the views of Democratic hopefuls Al Gore and Bill Bradley as too liberal. It is this McCain who thus far has attracted enough of these voters to make for a battle with George W. Bush for the Republican nomination.
The other John McCain is far more conservative than he has appeared at this stage of his campaign, perhaps more so than the Democrats and independents who have voted for him, and more conservative than those who expect to vote for him on the next two Tuesdays.
Although he has been aligned with Democrats on a few issues such as the anti-tobacco bill and campaign finance reform, McCain has proved to be far to the right on other key issues.
On gun control, McCain voted in 1993 against the Brady bill, which required a waiting period and a criminal background check on customers wishing to buy a handgun. The bill eventually passed through Congress and was signed into law. He voted against the 1994 crime bill, which included the outlawing of semiautomatic assault weapons.
McCain also voted for most of the provisions in Newt Gingrich's famous 1994 campaign document Contract with America, and in 1996 he voted against a measure that would ban job discrimination against gays.
Americans for Democratic Action, the nation's oldest liberal advocacy organization, recently issued a new study of McCain's voting record and gave him a lifetime liberal voting average of 9 percent out of 100. The percentage is based on more than 300 House and Senate votes cast since he was elected to the House in 1982.
In a recent MSNBC online article, an ADA spokeswoman said that just because he went against the GOP mainstream by voting against the tobacco industry and for campaign finance reform doesn't make him liberal. ''All it proves,'' she said, ''is you can't be wrong all the time.''
On the other hand, the American Conservative Union, which publishes annual ratings of members of Congress based on key selected votes, noted that over his career, McCain has a solidly conservative voting record.
McCain's record on labor is probably more conservative than many of his Democratic supporters who support organized labor. The national AFL-CIO, which endorsed Gore, gave McCain a rating of zero in 1999 and a lifetime rating of 15 percent out of 100. The national labor organization cited McCain's vote last year against a bill that would send federal aid to public school districts and recruit 100,000 new teachers.
Meanwhile, the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental lobbying group, gave McCain a rating of 7 percent in 1995 and a rating of 15 percent for his 1998 votes.
The league specifically referred to his votes to allow timber companies to cut trees in national forests without adequate environmental safeguards. He also voted against an amendment to keep the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska closed to oil drilling. As the league noted, McCain does support a bipartisan effort to protect the Grand Canyon, but that was not enough to get his rating above 15 percent.
Meanwhile, McCain voted to ban late-term abortions, but backed off an earlier stance on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 US Supreme Court decision that legalized abortions nationwide. At one point, McCain was quoted as saying that a repeal of Roe v. Wade must occur, but only if combined with a sustained effort to reduce the number of abortions across the nation.
He then said last summer that he would not now support repeal of Roe v. Wade because it would force a number of women to undergo illegal and dangerous abortions. His message on this issue still appears to be muddled.
McCain also voted to convict Clinton on impeachment charges of perjury and obstructing justice, a vote that the vast majority of Democratic members of Congress, and most of the electorate, opposed.
After attracting a number of Democrats and independents to his candidacy, McCain now hopes to appeal to a majority of Republican voters who have thus far overwhelmingly backed Bush. He is telling them that he is more like Ronald Reagan, who appealed to both Republicans and Democrats in his two successful presidential campaigns.
But the real McCain is no Reagan. President Reagan had the charisma and ability to hold onto a majority of core Republican voters while attracting enough Democrats and independents to defeat, first, Jimmy Carter and then, in 1984, Walter F. Mondale for a second term.
McCain, unlike Reagan, has had difficulty gaining a majority of Republicans in the primaries. Perhaps, with his recent attacks against Christian Coalition stalwarts such as Pat Robertson, he will attract more moderate Democrats and independents, and more moderate Republicans in such key states as California and New York.
Although only the votes of registered Republicans will bind delegates in the California primary, McCain is looking to win the state's open primary so he could at least call the state's delegate-counting procedure unfair.
After attracting many Democratic and independent voters, McCain must now woo Republicans by touting his conservative voting record. If he survives the primary season, he would be well positioned. Recent polls show that a Gore-Bush matchup would be too close to call, but a Gore-McCain contest would have McCain winning easily, largely because of his support from Democrats and independents. But Democrats and independents might consider that, when voting for McCain, they are voting for the entire package - conservative as well as maverick. The real McCain is someone they ought to get to know.
Robert A. Jordan is a Globe columnist.
