Cindy McCain, who has long used her voice for humanitarian causes worldwide, is President Joe Biden’s pick as the U.S. representative to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, where she would help combat global hunger.
The post would take McCain — a lifelong Arizona Republican and widow of longtime U.S. Sen. John McCain, 2008 Republican presidential nominee and celebrated Vietnam prisoner of war — from her home in north-central Phoenix to Rome.
The position, which had been in the works for months, requires approval from the U.S. Senate, where her husband served for decades until his death in 2018. The White House sent the nomination to the Senate on Wednesday.
"I am deeply honored and look forward (to) the work ahead," McCain wrote on Twitter.
The nomination of McCain to the post comes nine months after she threw her support behind Biden, a Democrat and longtime friend. The McCains were introduced by first lady Jill Biden during a cocktail party in the late 1970s in Hawaii.
McCain, 67, cited her family’s decades-long friendship and respect for Joe Biden, who often disagreed with her husband but whose love of country remained steadfast.
Her endorsement of Biden during the 2020 presidential race, as Arizona was up for grabs, helped Biden close his argument encouraging Republicans to cross party lines to reject GOP President Donald Trump and his polarizing politics.
Her support of the Democratic ticket earned McCain a censure from loyal Trump activists within the Arizona Republican Party, who objected to her registration as a Republican. Many of those far-right activists had long warred with the late senator over his record, and then directed their anger at her.
Outside of politics, McCain, heiress to the Hensley and Co. beer distributorship in Phoenix, is a political figure in her own right.
She has been involved in charitable work for decades, visiting foreign countries through a nonprofit that provides surgery to children with cleft lips or palates and no access to care. As a former member of the Board of Trustees for the HALO Trust nonprofit, she traveled to impoverished nations such as Zimbabwe to advocate for the removal of land mines.
Over the years, she has raised awareness about human trafficking through the foreign-policy think tank at Arizona State University that bears her husband’s name and has advocated for civility in politics at a time of intense dysfunction. Cindy McCain chairs ASU’s McCain Institute’s advisory board of trustees, where she has helped set program priorities.
A former special-education teacher, McCain has lent her voice to charitable work to help improve early learning for young kids in Arizona. A member of the board of Project C.U.R.E., which delivers medical supplies around the world to underserved medical clinics, she has helped raise awareness and money for medical facilities in Kenya, Zambia and Ghana.
Source & Full Story: news.yahoo
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