Mediaboss Marketing

AP Photo

The Arizona senators team has been ridding the states GOP apparatus of his tea party foes.

By Alex Isenstadt

12/30/14 5:33 AM EST

Nearly a year ago, tea party agitators in Arizona managed to get John McCain censured by his own state party. Now, hes getting his revenge.

As the longtime Republican senator lays the groundwork for a likely 2016 reelection bid, his political team is engaging in an aggressive and systematic campaign to reshape the state GOP apparatus by ridding it of conservative firebrands and replacing them with steadfast allies.

Story Continued Below

The ambitious effort detailed to POLITICO by nearly a dozen McCain operatives, donors, and friends has stretched from office buildings in Alexandria, Virginia, where strategists plotted and fundraisers collected cash for a super PAC, to Vietnamese-American communities across Arizona, where recruiters sought out supporters eager to help the incumbent defeat the tea party.

Team McCains goal? Unseat conservative activists who hold obscure, but influential, local party offices.

Under the byzantine rules of Arizona Republican Party politics, these elected officials, known as precinct committeemen, vote for local party chairmen. The chairmen, in turn, determine how state and local GOP funds are spent, which candidates are promoted in an election year, and which political issues are highlighted all matters of central concern for McCain heading into 2016, when the threat of a primary looms.

Read more:
McCain's big purge