WATCH: While Avoiding ENDA Vote, McCain Misdirects Thousands Of Potential New Followers Of GOP Senator From Arizona

Arizona's Politics reported yesterday that Arizona Senator John McCain (R-AZ) ducked yesterday's key (and, close) vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act ("ENDA") by going to New York to tape Late Night With Jimmy Fallon at the same hour his colleagues were voting;  as it turned out, he was also (unintentionally, I assume) misdirecting thousands of potential followers.

Much of the six-minute interview was spent discussing the Senator's use of his cell phone - both for Twitter and for video poker.  More than once, McCain (and Fallon) encouraged viewers to follow him on Twitter:

"I have 1.8 million followers, and it's @SenatorJohnMcCain, sooo, follow me on Twitter.... And, if you have trouble sleeping, follow me on Twitter."

Fallon and McCain both repeated that Twitter "handle".

Unfortunately, you will not find Arizona's senior Senator if you type that in to Twitter's search bar. (We tried.)  Because, his handle is ACTUALLY @SenJohnMcCain.

It is a valuable Twitter feed to follow;  it was at the correct feed that Arizona's Politics learned that the Senator would be out of town during the ENDA vote - a vote which McCain was trying not to take a specific position.

Fallon did not ask about any issues other than Obamacare.



By the way, McCain's truly funny line was in their conversation about the video-poker-during-hearing picture.  Fallon was trying to say something about what the hearing was about ("It was a Senate hearing, and it was, what...") and McCain broke in to finish the sentence ("...boring!")

Arizona's Politics was also happy to have its question about that incident answered: he was not playing for real money.  He indicated that he had been winning that afternoon, and was up to $19 million. (Cue Rep. David Schweikert (R-CD6) scoffing and pointing out how many seconds of government spending that would have covered if it had been real money.)


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