HORACE LANGFORD JR. / PVT Robert Martinez, Nellie Logan and Debbie Castrejon, far left, pose along with "Grim Reapers" wearing Sen. John McCain masks, during a visit by the Change to Win Truth Squad to Pahrump Thursday. Advertisement

Beethoven's Funeral March played as a handful of union activists dressed in grim reaper outfits with masks of Republican Party presidential candidate U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., walked off a bus into the hot sun across from the Saddle West Hotel and Casino Thursday morning.

Wording on the black bus proclaimed "Worse than Bush.org" and "The Change to Win Truth Squad."

Debbie Castrejon, of Pahrump, was the speaker at the microphone in front of the Grim Reapers. She plans to accompany the bus on a 10 state tour of western battleground states over the next three weeks.

Nellie Logan and Judy Bagley were dressed in bandages to show McCain's apparent lack of concern over worker safety.

"John McCain has a record of dismantling health safety laws," Castrejon said in a prepared speech. As an example, she said the Arizona senator voted against letting victims of toxic waste sue for damages.

Castrejon said she became motivated politically this year primarily because she's been a long time union member. She belongs to Culinary Union 226 and works at the Excalibur Resort in Las Vegas.

"We're just down-to-earth working people. We pay our bills and everything. We just want the Nevada workers to have everything in the American dream. It's really important to all of us. We're all union workers, we work hard, we get a good wage and we still can't pay our bills," Castrejon said afterwards.

"What do you do with these people who are only making $6, $7 per hour? How are they surviving? We're just barely making it on a union wage," she said.

Castrejon said Pahrump residents need to "get off their rumps" and voice their opposition to the Yucca Mountain project, which McCain supports.

"McCain's plans put all workers at risk of developing cancer and leukemia," she said. "What makes Senator McCain's support of Yucca Mountain even worse is he knows how dangerous it is."

Castrejon said McCain has a double standard, endorsing Yucca Mountain but refusing to allow any nuclear waste in Arizona.

Other union activists on the bus charged that unlike McCain's maverick image, he voted with President Bush 85 percent of the time.

"That's why we call him 'McBush,' " said Jim Jeske of Chicago, a member of the Service Employees International Union.

The bus arrived in Pahrump after visiting Reno, Carson City and Las Vegas, where they held a "foreclosure funeral." From Pahrump they left for Phoenix, in the heart of McCain country.