By Joe Mathews, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

ST. CHARLES, MO. — On behalf of John McCain, Tom Kuypers does his best.

Addressing three dozen of his fellow members of the Pachyderm Club, a Republican organization that met Friday in the back room of a Golden Corral restaurant here, Kuypers, 69, talked movingly about McCain’s service in Vietnam.

Flashing polling data he found on the Internet, he argued that McCain had the best chance of winning the general election. He handed off a critical question about the Arizona senator’s record on immigration to a Puerto Rican engineer who runs the local Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

But some questions were too much. Asked why McCain wanted to close the detainee camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Kuypers allowed, “I have no idea.” An insurance agent asked why McCain had voted against tax cuts proposed by President Bush in 2001 and 2003, and Kuypers answered: “He probably got up on the wrong side of the bed that morning.”

After the talk, Kuypers, a retired Boeing engineer, accepted congratulations for his effort but said he would love more information about McCain: “I’ve tried contacting the campaign, but nobody knows who’s in charge in these parts.” Read more…

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