It was Election Eve 2002. I was doing a noon live shot at a Republican rally in Yuma. Being small town TV, the producer asked if I could do weather that day. I had never done a weather cast before and said sure. “Maybe John McCain would join me.”
Well, McCain did join me. And we joked and laughed our way through a 3 minute weather report, without any monitor or any clue as to what we were doing.
Viewers liked it or hated it. One woman emailed my news director asking why “McCain and Heath are drunk on air?”
But the Arizona Associated Press appreciated it. The next spring they awarded it the “Third Place Best Live Shot” in Arizona.
Years later, as McCain ran for president, I showed him the AP certificate while we were riding on his campaign bus in South Carolina. He couldn’t stop chuckling. Then he took it and autographed it.
Here, for the record, is the actual report that still makes me laugh to this day.