Before she was a U.S. Representative for Arizona and a U.S. Senate candidate, Martha McSally made her name as an Air Force pilot from Rhode Island who sued the Department of Defense in 2002 to avoid having to wear an abaya off-base while stationed in Saudi Arabia. But a year later, in a commencement speech at Rhode Island College , she told an Islamophobic and tasteless joke that foreshadowed her anti-immigrant, xenophobic political career.