Quoted from Fox News April 4, 2008:

            "McCain’s evolution from an opponent of the King holiday to a supporter took years. “I’d remind you that … we can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing and Dr. King understood this about his fellow Americans,” McCain said Friday.

            In his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives, McCain sided with the minority and opposed the 1983 law creating the national holiday, arguing there were enough federal holidays and that it would be too costly. In 1987 when the governor of Arizona rescinded the state’s King holiday, McCain called it the correct move. 

        But then he rever$ed him$elf in 1989, a$ Arizona faced touri$m boycott$.

            A May 1989 edition of the Phoenix Gazette quoted him as saying: “I’m still opposed to another federal holiday … but I support the Arizona Martin Luther King holiday because of the enormous proportions this issue has taken on as far as the image of our state and our treatment towards not only blacks but all minorities.”

            Arizona voters eventually approved a measure in 1992, making it the second to last state to recognize the holiday (before New Hampshire in 1999).  McCain said Monday he reversed his stance on the Arizona holiday because he “learned (King) was a transcendent figure in American history.”   He said he was “not proud” that Arizona was one of the last states to recognize the holiday.

       But as late as 1994, McCain voted against federal funds for the MLK Federal Holiday Commission.

    “It’s frankly disingenuous for John McCain to try and reinvent himself for the general election by distorting his record of opposing a holiday honoring Dr. King,” Democratic National spokeswoman Karen Finney said in a statement Friday. 

        “John McCain should be honest about his full record of opposing the federal holiday, opposing a state holiday four years later, using divisive language to defend himself and voting to cut off funding for the commission working to promote the King holiday as recently as 1994.”

    McCain also took heat for his short-lived support of South Carolina’s right to fly the confederate flag over the state house during the 2000 primary. Not until he was defeated for the nomination did he say that was not his true feeling but an act of political cowardice."

FOX News’ Carl Cameron, Mosheh Oinounou and Aaron Bruns contributed to this report.