Democrats are doing triage to save the House, the NYT reports
Arizona makes only this cameo appearance:
In some of the most conservative districts in the nation, several Democrats appear to be emerging in stronger positions, largely because Republicans nominated candidates who appear to be weaker. Even Republicans conceded that Representatives Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, Walt Minnick of Idaho and Larry Kissell of North Carolina were no longer as vulnerable as once assumed.
8:44 AM
The case of the disappearing files of Jan Brewer's criminally insane son
Amy Silverman and Paul Rubin in New Times:
Ronald Brewer […] was deemed criminally insane in 1990, following a July 1989 arrest and subsequent indictment for the sexual assault and kidnapping of a Phoenix woman. According to a Phoenix Police Department report dated July 29, 1989, Brewer, then an unemployed 25-year-old, forced his way into a woman’s apartment on West Indian School Road and threatened to hurt her “real bad” if she didn’t engage in sexual acts, including performing fellatio.
[…]
Those details are not available for public inspection at county Superior Court — even though in a typical criminal case, they probably would be. On January 9, 2009, Superior Court Judge Pendleton Gaines sealed the entire case file at the request of Ronald Brewer’s attorney.
On December 1, 2008, President-Elect Barack Obama nominated then-Governor Janet Napolitano to be the head of Homeland Security. Her successor? Secretary of State Jan Brewer. Brewer assumed office as governor on January 21.
The timing is curious.
And that’s not the even the juicy part.
Phoenix Newspapers (a.k.a. the Arizona Republic) filed a motion in July asking the judge to reconsider his January 2009 sealing order.
That motion also is under wraps. The court docket suggests that a ruling by the judge is pending.
The docket also strongly suggests that Ronald Brewer has several times over many years attempted to gain permanent release from his confinement at the state hospital in Phoenix, and has successfully won temporary release at various times.
7:26 AM
Jan Brewer's big brain freeze on Hardball
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
7:18 PM
Jon Hulburd goes on the attack against Ben Quayle
This is a radio spot, with images added for You Tube viewing, run by the Hulburd campaign on local Christian stations.
“I’ve read that congressional candidate Ben Quayle helped create one of the most offensive websites I’ve ever seen,” a woman says in the ad, currently running on three Christian radio stations and a Phoenix conservative talk radio station. “The site promotes drugs and prostitution, is filled with meanness and foul language, humiliates women and even mocks people with Down syndrome.”
7:18 AM
Doug MacEachern on Jesse Kelly: "A really, really angry guy."
The Arizona Republic’s Doug MacEachern comes to not bury Little Benny Quayle, but to praise him.
MacEachern’s argument: Quayle’s not a complete sociopath, like the guy the GOP nominated to run against Gabrielle Giffords in the eighth Congressional District.
(The district includes most of Tucson and extends to cover the southeast corner of the state.)
Jesse Kelly is a rabid former marine who unexpectedly knocked out establishment candidate Jonathan Paton, making life considerably easier for Giffords in a tough re-election campaign.
Kelly visited the Republic’s editorial board the other day, and in MacEachern’s telling he had a lot to say:
I met Kelly in an Editorial Board meeting. Honorable fellow: war veteran, like all the district’s GOP candidates. Indeed, he was a Marine combat platoon leader, the most dangerous job on earth. He is an honest conservative. And a really, really angry guy.
When asked about priorities, he gave an answer that, while perfectly suitable for a former Marine officer, it seemed a bit over the top for a prospective member of Congress: “We’ve got to kill all members of radical Islam.”
And, when asked if he could work with Democrats in Congress: “I hope there’s no Democrats left in Congress when I get there.”
Look, I like shock theater, too. And I’ve been known to be a bit edgy at times. But Kelly is that rare conservative who takes politics so personally that he has morphed into his worst enemy. Like far-left liberals, he doesn’t believe his political opponents are merely wrong; they’re evil: “I think liberals are destroying the nation. We had better go fight them in Washington before they destroy our children’s future.”
About Quayle, MacEachern continues the Republic’s odd insistence on mentioning at least once a day the scandal it did not tell readers about during the primary campaign, namely Quayle’s cheesy past writing for an ultraskanky Scottsdale nightlife web site.
That sordid tale is told in its entirety here.
PHXated’s complete Ben Quayle archive is here.
7:46 AM
Jon Hulburd: I want five debates with Brock Landers!
The democratic challenger to Young Benny Quayle is Jon Hulburd.
He ran unopposed in the Democratic primary. The third congressonal district is solidly red, but he may have a chance given the young Quayle’s vulnerabilities.
He talks to ABC 15’s Dave Biscobing here:
“This election is now between Jon Hulburd and Brock Landers,” said a statement released by his campaign hours after the primary ended.
It’s a shot at Quayle, who’s accused of writing under the pseudonym “Brock Landers” on a racy blog called DirtyScottsdale.com a few years ago.
The statement continues: “It’s between a young man who fabricated a family, degraded women, and then tried to lie about it, and a small businessman and father of five who has been dedicated to his community. These concerns were raised by Republicans during the primary and at least 77% of Republican voters were unhappy with Ben Quayle’s response.”
Hulburd has unsuccessfully run for office in the past, but based on Quayle’s own history, political experts believe the Democrat could steal the seat in the traditionally Republican district.
And Hulburd’s campaign also isn’t waiting to further challenge Quayle, asking the GOP candidate to square off in five debates.
The video:
11:38 AM
Election update!
David Lujan conceded to Felecia Rotellini in the Democratic primary for AG.
Rotellini will face either Andrew Thomas or Tom Horne in November, after the votes are counted on the GOP side, which was even closer than the Dems'.
From the Republic:
Lujan, leader of the Democratic minority in the state House, conceded to Rotellini on Twitter.
“It was a good fight,” Lujan wrote on his Twitter account. “Now, I am going to work as hard as I can to elect Felecia Rotellini as our next attorney general! Congrats Felecia!”
On the GOP side, the news is relatively promising. As Stephen Lemons puts it:
It’s not looking good for former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas. As of the end of today’s count of the remaining ballots, state Schools Superintendent Tom Horne had expanded his lead of about 400 votes from yesterday to 1,073.
The margin needs to be much narrower—only 200 votes—to warrant a recount.
There are conflicting accounts of how many ballots are outstanding—one paper said 40,000, another more than 50,000—but there are more than enough to swing the election ether way.
7:24 AM
UPDATE: TheDirty.com libel suit
The AP reported yesterday that a Cinncinnati cheerleader had won a default libel suit against the proprietor of a site called “the Dirt.com.”
The Arizona Republic reported that as a judgment against the site we all know as TheDirty.com, the place where Young Benny Quayle undertook some of his early nightlife epistolary efforts.
PHXated repeated the news (see orignal post below), even correcting the AP’s error.
Turns out the story was half right in about three different ways.
TheDirty is the site that said the cheerleader had VD. But the suit was filed against a different site, TheDirt.com, which ignored it and got a default judgment of $11 million against it. Hilarity has presumably ensued.
Politico has the story here.
It contains these entertaining passages from Eric Deters, the plaintiff’s attorney, about TheDirty.com founder and Quayle literary amanuensis Nik Richie:
“We’re still going to serve that S.O.B. personally,” Deters said of Richie. “I’m going to make that dirty, rotten, mean, vermin bastard pay. He’s a piece of dirt.”
When asked what he thought about Quayle blogging for Dirty Scottsdale, Deters – who has been following national media coverage of the political novice – called it “absolutely disgraceful.”
“He ought to be ashamed of himself,” Deters said “He’s another lying little weasel politician. That’s not slander; that is my opinion.”
Updates as they happen.
The original post:
One of the grimier things about TheDirty.com, the web site Ben Quayle wrote for and helped found, is now hateful many of its postings are.
As we’ve mentioned before, they basically come down to “she has VD.”
The practice seems to have cost the site and its founder, Hooman Karamian, who goes by the name Nik Ritchie, $11 million.
From the AP:
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A gossip website has been hit with an $11 million judgment for libel and slander after posting false accusations about a Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader.
The judgment against Dirty World Entertainment Recordings, which runs the site Thedirt.com [sic], came Thursday after the site did not respond to a lawsuit brought by Sarah Jones. The high school teacher’s picture was posted on the site along with an accusation she had been exposed to two venereal diseases.
Richie is the guy who told Politico that Quayle had helped him get the site going and had written for it under the name Brock Landers.
10:40 AM
Newsflash: Arizona Republic readers learn about Ben Quayle's porny alter ego
In its campaign wrap-up story today, the Arizona Republic tells its readers that Ben Quayle might not be the ideal GOP candidate to replace John Shadegg.
Why?
Well, turns out the sanctimonious family-values candidate used to write for, and palled around with the founder of, a sleazy web site in Scottsdale.
His nom de skank was Brock Landers, the name of a porn actor in Boogie Nights.
As PHXated has noted here and here, while the story has been a national news staple for the past two week, the Arizona Republic has apparently never mentioned it in its news pages.
(We have yet to find an actual printed story in which this was mentioned; the paper has run a couple of wire stories on the web site. It certainly has not done what you’d expect, which is routinely make reference to an ongoing scandal in a major local political campaign.)
Until today, that is… two days after the election he was running in.
11:14 PM
Little Benny Quayle on Greta Van Susteren
He proposes that Congress’s salaries be cut if it doesn’t reduce the budget.
“They have these incentives in the private sector and they work very well,” he says, insipidly.
Van Susteren, clearly skeptical, does her best to pin him down on the Dirty Scottsdale scandal.
Quayle has yet to answer any question about his involvement with the site clearly.
10:42 PM
What exactly does Ben Quayle's wife do?
From Young Benny Quayle’s campaign web site:
Ben is married to Tiffany Crane Quayle, an Arizona State University graduate. Tiffany manages Insight Enterprises (an Arizona based Fortune 500 company) for CA and is very active in the Phoenix Women’s Board of the Steele Children’s Research Center.
Now, the bio caught our eye because it’s odd to say someone “manages” a Fortune 500 company. It’s not really a business term on that level.
You “manage” a 7-11.
Fortune 500 companies have directors, or CEOs, or vice presidents, right?
And what does it mean to say someone manages a company for “CA”? She lives in Arizona, right? Does she work in California? Could she head up Insight’s California office, maybe?
And what in the hell is Insight Enterprises?
Turns out it’s not precisely on the Fortune 500, but whatever.
Here’s the company’s corporate profile:
Insight Enterprises, Inc. (Insight) is a provider of information technology (IT) hardware, software and services to small, medium and large businesses and public sector institutions in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific.
Sounds pretty important.
Odd, though, that someone who “manages” a “Fortune 500 company” has such a small internet footprint. You don’t find much info on the internets about Tiffany Crane Quayle.
It takes some prowling around before you discover something interesting.
Tiffany Quayle doesn’t work for Insight Enterprises.
She works for a company that until recently was called Computer Associates and is now called …
… CA.
Here’s its profile:
CA, Inc. (CA) is an independent enterprise information technology (IT) software and service company with capabilities across IT environments from mainframe and physical to virtual and cloud. CA develops and delivers software and services that help organizations to manage and secure their IT infrastructures and deliver flexible IT services. CA addresses most of the components of the computing environment, including people, information, processes, systems, networks, applications and databases, regardless of the hardware or software customers are using. It has a portfolio of software products that address its customers' needs, with a specific focus on service management and assurance, project and portfolio management and security (identity and access management). It delivers its products on-premise, or for certain products, via software-as-a-service
Basically, CA does outsourced computer software sales for Insight, in the same way another company might do its catering, or landscaping.
Here’s what Quayle herself says she does on LinkedIn:
I actually left CA (and the world of the “big corporation”) to work for a small start up in the bay area…which was an unbelievable learning experience. It also lead me to a unique opportunity to work for VMware. I would have stayed at VMware for years if CA hadn’t recruited me back for a channel sales position. Now that I’m in sales, I know it’s where I’m going to stay.
Tiffany Quayle’s Specialties:
IT Sales & Marketing – specifically in the channel…even more specifically, on the LAR side of the channel.
If you bring coffee in to Steve Jobs' office, you don’t “manage Apple, a Fortune 500 company, for Starbucks.”
You’re a barista.
PHXated has a friend in Chicago who works for AT&T. One of his clients is Walgreens. He doesn’t “manage Walgreens, a Fortune 500 company.”
He just sells them phones. (It’s a little more complicated than that, but still.)
What does Tiffany Quayle do? She sells computer software, basically making sure Insight is up to date on its Microsoft Office licenses.
It’s a little more complicated than that, but still.
For free, PHXated offers this quick resume rewrite for the distaff Quayle:
“Tiffany Crane Quayle does corporate computer software sales for CA, formerly Computer Associates. Her client in Arizona is Insight Enterprises, a Fortune 1000 company.”
The complete PHXated Ben Quayle archive.
8:57 AM
Ben Quayle cancelled his own victory party
From Politico:
After a cascade of accusations and ever-shifting denials that he wrote for a raunchy website under the name of a fictional porn star, it seemed even Ben Quayle thought he was going to lose a 10-way Republican primary in Arizona.
Quayle, the son of former Vice President Dan Quayle, went so far as to cancel a victory party he had planned to hold Tuesday night to watch the returns in the race for the GOP nod to replace retiring Rep. John Shadegg in the 3rd District.
6:34 AM
Andrew Thomas Agonistes
From the Republic, reporting that Tom Horne how has a 373-vote lead over Andrew Thomas, enough to avoid a recount:
First, Thomas delivered an all-but-victory speech at Republican Party headquarters, while a dejected Horne told TV crews that low turnout had likely cost him the election.
Then Horne roared back, erasing a deficit of some 9,000 votes as ballots were counted in Pima County and elsewhere. Thomas' spokesman, Jason Rose, appeared to concede the race to Horne in a series of tweets, urging Republicans to come together behind their new standard bearer.
Wednesday morning, in a statement released through Rose, Thomas appeared to pedal back from those words.
“The time for debating and tough words in the Republican primary is over,” Thomas said. “The time for vote counting is upon us. I appreciated Tom Horne’s words earlier in the campaign and just last night when things were not looking his way that he would support me were I to be the nominee. Likewise, if Tom prevails I don’t want there to be any doubt that I will support him against the Democrat. Let’s see where the vote counting takes us.”
Read more here.
10:46 AM
Primary wrap-up
Horne has a few hundred vote lead over Andrew Thomas, the Republic is reporting.
Brewer wins.
McCain wins.
Dan Quayle wins!.
In fairness to the Republican party, Quayle benefitted from his name; the fact that early voting was well underway when his cheesy past as part of the brain trust of a skanky web site came to light; and, in the end, he won with just 23 percent of the vote in a race with ten candidates.
His victory is great news for Democrats, who have a tarnished opponent to take on.
(The Republic story doesn’t mention Quayle’s experience with DirtyScottsdale.com.)
Montgomery beats Romley for Maricopa County attorney, in the biggest surprise of the night.
From the Arizona Daily Star:
Paton, who made his concession announcement to a Republican gathering after he called Kelly, looked stunned and said he didn’t want to speculate on the reasons for his loss.
The primary effectively puts Montgomery in office—incredibly, no Democrat was running—and Montgomery will take office immediately in November, the Republic says.
And in the 8th Congressional district down south, in the GOP primary to challenge Gabrielle Giffords, a Tea Party candidate named Jesse Kelly came out on top.
6:44 AM
On the GOP side of the 8th Congressional district
Jesse Kelly’s a Tea Party wacko and a much easier challenger for incumbent Democrat Gabrielle Giffords.
10:13 PM
It's primary day
Remember, what can help Arizona most is moderates who can improve the state’s standing nationally … and help bring in the federal dollars that pork disdainers like McCain and Shadegg have not.
Accordingly, the people to root for today are the weakest, dumbest and most politically wounded candidates in the various Republican primaries; they will be most vulnerable in the fall, right?
In other words, go Ben Quayle!
McCain — a bad senator, a bad person, and a bad man — seems safe from challenger J.D. Hayworth, who would have been fun to have on the ballot in November.
But there are some interesting Congressional races as well, notably the one for the retiring Shadegg’s seat, which came to national attention after Quayle’s cheesy past as a writer for a skanky web site came to light.
Again, PHXated hopes Quayle wins today, but has generously extended a blogging invitation to Quayle should he be unemployed tomorrow. The search for Scottsdale’s Foxiest Chick has just begun!
Here’s Politico’s analysis of the Gabrielle Giffords race:
The 8th District — a vast expanse that stretches south and east from Tucson, through Sierra Vista and Tombstone, all the way to a corner border with Mexico and New Mexico — provides an ideal test case to understand the degree to which national political forces might sweep aside even a polished incumbent who has steeled herself for the onslaught by paying close attention to state and local matters.
“She’s done everything she needs to do. If she loses, it would be one of those cases where it doesn’t matter how much you spent, it doesn’t matter what you do,” said Rodolfo Espino, a political science professor at Arizona State University.
Here particularly, Giffords' position will be more secure if a nut named Jesse Kelly wins the GOP primary for the seat. Politico:
Conventional political wisdom holds that candidates like him can’t attract enough support in a general election-when the electorate is considerably broader and more diverse-but Kelly seems determined to test the proposition anyway.
In a district in which nearly 17 percent of the population was 65 years old or older at the time of the last census, Kelly wants to phase out Social Security — going a step further than the plan in Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisc.) “Roadmap” that he also endorses.
Here’s 538.com’s analyses of the races:
AZ’s crowded Republican House primaries feature three contests in districts where GOPers think they have a chance of beating incumbent Democrats, and one for an open Republican seat.
The race that’s attracted the most national attention is probably in AZ-08, a Tucson-based district represented by two-term Democrat Gabby Giffords. A classic Establishment-Tea Party matchup involving former state senator Jonathan Paton, the early frontrunner, and Tea Party activist Jesse Kelley, is considered very close. Giffords is a veteran of two close races, and is building up her campaign treasury as Republicans squabble, but her opposition to the new AZ immigration law and votes for key Obama legislation have made her appear vulnerable.
In Phoenix-suburban AZ-03, where Republican John Shadegg is retiring, the early frontrunner was Ben Quayle, son of the former Veep from Indiana, but he is fighting to hold off self-funder Steve Moak. It’s been a battle of self-inflicted wounds, with Quayle hurt by association with an off-color internet site (to which he occasionally made posts under a pseudonym inspired by a porn-star character in Boogie Nights), and Moak battling claims of conflicts of interest between non-profit and for-profit businesses.
In AZ-05, another Phoenix-area district, former Maricopa County Treasurer David Schweikert is so confident of victory that he’s saving money for a general election against Democratic incumbent Harry Mitchell, but businessman Jim Ward remains financially competitive down the stretch.
And in the huge, largely rural AZ-01, dentist Paul Gosar is in a close race with 2008 nominee Sydney Hay for the right to take on freshman Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick. The incumbent beat Hay by a 56-40 margin two years ago.
… and, for variety’s sake, a sample from Greg Patterson’s:
CD 3
Conventional wisdom is that Quayle was the favorite, but self destructed with his handling of the Dirty Scottsdale revelations. That means that Moak is likely to take the race—assuming that Quayle self destructed early enough.
I think the candidate to watch is Waring. He’s represented the district for many years and he walks door to door every weekend. Remember that the race has 10 candidates and at least 7 of them are credible. So you can win with a really low vote count. CD 3 is actually looking like a large scale legislative race. That means that Waring’s shoe leather is likely to offset Moak’s money.
6:30 AM
Drudge salutes McCain
The story is an AP campaign wrap-up, detailing how McCain handled the Hayworth challenge.
8:11 PM
Politico looks at the "heavy cost" of McCain's re-election
Or re-nomination, at least:
[I]t’s been a costly road to a 5th term for the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, and the experience is likely to leave a lasting and unsightly stain on his legacy.
It’s not just the $20 million he’s spent already this election or the scorched earth campaign that he’s run. Rather, it’s the choices he’s made and the positions he’s embraced—-and what it reveals about him—-that could make for a complicated final chapter in his political biography.
[…]
A former McCain aide, who asked not to be identified, said it’s an open question which shade of McCain the Senate would see upon his return and acknowledged the repositioning might affect how he’s remembered.
“This could be a definition for his legacy,” he said. “From 1997 to 2006, that’s a different legacy.”
PHXated’s “The Case Against John McCain” is here.
6:59 AM
What in the hell is happening at the Rodney Glassman campaign?
Rodney, Rodney, Rodney.
You’re a nice Jewish boy from Tucson. You sing at your temple, you’re not unhandsome, and you’re rich to boot.
In the Democratic primary for John McCain’s senate seat, we’re voting for John Dougherty, him being an investigative reporter and all, but on paper you’d seem to be McCain’s sturdiest challenger.
But then we read Stephen Lemon’s Feathered Bastard post about how top advisors are leaving your campaign:
[S]everal confidential sources inform me that Glassman’s staffers left because they were not happy with the behavior of their candidate.
These sources relayed a litany of complaints about the Glassman campaign, from Glassman berating staffers and volunteers in public, even yelling at them, to Glassman’s having his brother Jeremy play a major role in the campaign (doing little or nothing, they say), and the fact that Glassman and his minions gave Democrats reason to believe he would sink millions into his bid for Senate.
The details:
My sources tell me that Glassman was, as one of them put it, “out of control in the worst possible way.” They say he was needlessly rude to staffers and volunteers alike, and described him throwing temper tantrums and yelling at stunned campaign workers.
They depicted Glassman as a spoiled rich kid with a frat boy sense of humor. One described an incident during a fundraiser where he asked if the host’s assistant was an illegal alien.
Worst of all is a story from the Arizona Daily Star, in which a Tucson City Council member says Glassman said to her, “"The toughest thing for me to do will be to sit next to an openly gay councilmember.”
Glassman, shown above, ironically enough, at PHoenix’s Pride Parade this summer, denies having said it.
9:08 AM
Confidential to Ben Quayle: On Wednesday, give us a call!
Your big primary is Tuesday. You might be the GOP nominee in the race to replace John Shadegg in Arizona’s 3rd congressional district.
We have to be honest. We hope you win.
The primary, that is.
Last week it was revealed you used to hell around Scottsdale with the guy who founded Dirty Scottsdale.com, a skanky nightlife web site now morphed into The Dirty.com.
You used to write for the site under the name Brock Landers, a man embarked on an epic quest for Scottsdale’s hottest foxiest chick or somesuch, while all around you the site posted porny photos of club denizens with a lot of speculation about venereal diseases.
A classy operation!
This was two or three years ago.
Now all of a sudden you’re a family values Republican who borrows other peoples' kids so you look like a family man.
Anyway, like we said we hope you win, because you’d be vulnerable in the general.
But, here’s the deal.
The Dirty.com has really taken off. You seem to be a web guy with a magic touch.
And be honest: Is the search for Scottsdale’s hottest chick really over?
We think you’re the guy who can help find her—and help PHXated find its groove.
So, like we said, we hope you win on Tuesday.
But if not .. on Wednesday, drop us a line!
The complete Ben Quayle story is here.
5:01 PM
The complete Ben Quayle/Brock Landers links list!
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a wee little web site, Dirty Scottsdale.
On the site, folks sent in pics of marginal nightlife people, to which was paired commentary distinguished as much by its grammatical uncertainty as its utterly skanky content—generally asseverations about venereal disease and the like.
One of its early noted contributors was a guy named Brock Landers.
Landers was a man on a mission, namely to find Scottsdale’s First Foxy Chick.
This was in 2007.
Flash forward three years. Dirty Scottsdale is now a network of sites, all published under the name of The Dirty.
And meanwhile, a young man named Little Benny Quayle decides to run for Congress. This is a venue open to him if not too many other folks of his fairly undistinguished life work because he happens to be the son of a former vice president of the United States.
All is going well (well, fairly well), until a bombshell drops in a story on a national political web site.
The story says young Quayle had been a writer for Dirty Scotsdale, under the name “Brock.”
In the story, Quayle denied that it was he!
Politico: Quayle denies link to Scottsdale site
“I was not involved in the site,” Quayle said.
But the story quoted the site’s founder, Nik Richie, who would seem to have been in a position to know, saying that Quayle had posted eight to ten times on the blog.
Soon, he weighed in with his version of events on The Dirty.
The Dirty: I Think It is Time ….
He wrote:
Since the beginning (DirtyScottsdale.com) three years ago, I have gotten the same question from the DIRTY ARMY from all over the world: “Who is Brock from the Dirty Celeb Brock’s Chick?”
I have kept it a secret until right now… the mystery man is Ben Quayle aka Brock Landers, the son of Vice President Dan Quayle. If you are a DIRTY ARMY Republican, vote for Ben Quayle because he was one of the original creators of DirtyScottsdale.com which evolved into TheDirty.com.
Phoenix’s 12 News then ran this report, which features Quayle changing his story, saying:
“I just posted comments to try to drive some traffic."
KPNX 12 News: Quayle linked to thedirty.com: Congressional candidate was trying to help out
That got Politico back into the action.
Politico: Ben Quayle changes story on web site
The site took an uncharacteristically harsh tone with the political neophyte:
Ben Quayle had a hard time getting his story straight Tuesday….
And not just about writing for the site:
Richie also told POLITICO that Quayle introduced him to attorneys at the Phoenix law firm where he worked, Snell & Wilmer, so his Internet site could incorporate. But Quayle told POLITICO Tuesday morning that he couldn’t recall whether he had made the introduction.
Later in the day, however, Quayle confirmed to several Phoenix TV stations that he introduced Richie to an intellectual property attorney at Snell & Wilmer.
“He wanted an IP attorney, and I referred him to one,” Quayle told 12News. “I don’t know if they met or not.”
The story also said that “Brock”’s full name was “Brock Landers.”
At this point, the guy who founded Dirty Scottsdale and the Dirty.com is getting mad that Quayle is denying his association.
He responds:
The Dirty: Ben Quayle is Brock Landers
Richie links to what he says is some of Quayle/Landers' best work:
The Dirty: Brock’s Chick
Wondering where Quayle got the name Brock Landers?
Meanwhile, Politico gleefully stays on the story:
Politico: Quayle’s bump on road to Congress
Politico: Quayle Lashes out at political foes
Says Quayle:
“It is amazing that the media will take a casual acquaintance and turn it into something tawdry, taking the word of a smut peddler at face value."
New York Times op-ed columnist Gail Collins takes a few swipes at Quayle, too.
NYT: More American Idols:
Consider Ben Quayle, the son of the former vice president. He’s running for Congress in Arizona. He’s been accused of both using a phony family in his campaign pictures and helping to found a local porn site. In response, he’s come up with a new ad in which he announces that Barack Obama is the “worst president in history,” swiftly bemoans “drug cartels in Mexico, tax cartels in D.C.” and concludes that “somebody has to go to Washington and knock the hell out of the place.”
Talk about a clear agenda for change. Although Quayle does show a terrible disrespect for the records of Warren Harding and James Buchanan.
And more locally, the right-wing blogger Greg Patterson says the game might be over for Young Benny Quayle.
Espresso Pundit: If this is true then Ben Quayle has no chance of going to Congress…:
The site is awful and if it’s true that Quayle is one of the founders and authors then his political career is over.
His prediction:
If it’s too late and Quayle’s name and money let him squeak through the primary then he will get crushed by CD 3 Democratic nominee Jon Hulburd (who will go on to be crushed in 2012 by Jim Waring or Dean Martin).
To distract attention, Quayle reveals himself as a noted presidential historian, contending, in a new TV commercial, that “Barack Obama is the worst president in history”:
Everyone chuckles for a day, and then goes back to asking about Dirty Scottsdale.
Meanwhile, on the national level, Quayle keeps lying. He tells ABCnews.com, too, that he only knew Richie through referring him to a lawyer.
ABC News: Ben Quayle Denies Blogging for Racy Website.
“I am not Brock Landers,” Quayle says.
Then, on Friday, Quayle lied a few more times on CNN’s John King show.
Amusingly, King is less interested in Dirty Scottsdale than he is in Quayle’s recent contentions about Obama. (“He’s only been in office eighteen months!”)
CNN: John King USA.
“I’ve been consistent with my story from the beginning”
“I had no affiliation with that website.”
Displaying, perhaps, his father’s way with handling a gaffe, Quayle, incredibly, keeps denying he was Brock Landers to the Associated Press:
AP: Like father, like son? Quayle stumbles in Arizona
Asked about the site this week, Quayle told The Associated Press that he “wrote a couple of satirical and fictional pieces for a satirical website” but that he quit doing so once the website shifted its editorial direction away from satire. Richie says the site’s content and tone have not changed from the days when Quayle was connected to it.
When asked if he wrote as Brock Landers, Quayle said: “There’s all sorts of posts under that alias and that’s not me. That’s really all I’ve got to say about that.”
Back in Arizona, the Arizona Capitol Times advances the story, discovering that Quayle’s involvement went back deeper than previously known:
Arizona Capitol Times: Quayle’s ties to ‘The Dirty’ founder began in 2005
Recalled Richie, referred to here by his real name, Hooman Karamian:
“There were chicks all over the place, trying to hook up with celebrities,” Karamian said. “We moseyed around the bar and casino tables, just making fun of chicks.”
Karamian, who made a comment on his website about a “crazy hooker” in Tahoe said he was referring to that night, but said he was only talking about a woman that he and Quayle had assumed was a prostitute and on drugs.
“I said (on TheDirty.com), ‘Hey, do you remember that crazy hooker?’ because we saw some hooker who was acting crazy,” Karamian told the Arizona Capitol Times. “I wasn’t implying that he had sex with a hooker at all.”
Thanks for clearing that up, Nik!
On Saturday, the Dirty bites back some more:
The Dirty: Ben Quayle is the Pinocchio of politics
… And on Sunday, a little more:
The Dirty: Brock Landers’ aka Ben Quayle’s Family Values Campaign
10:22 PM
Ben Quayle lies on John King
“I’ve been consistent with my story from the beginning,” he says.
“I had no affiliation with that website.”
11:47 AM
Politico continues to dog Young Benny Quayle
Politico’s latest encapsulation of Quayle’s situation is hard to argue with:
Republican congressional candidate Ben Quayle’s glossy campaign photos and polished talking points paint for voters a portrait of a longtime Arizonan, accomplished attorney and family man who will bring a “new generation” to Washington.
The claims reflect the small biographical exaggerations that often accompany a political newcomer’s first campaign. The reality is that Quayle has held three jobs in four years, posed for pictures in campaign literature with children that were not his, and grew up in Washington with a famous father, former Vice President Dan Quayle, whose influential friends have given generously to the younger Quayle’s campaign.
But Quayle, 33, has had to confront a much bigger credibility issue this week after a blogger revealed that he had once been a contributing writer for Dirty Scottsdale, a raunchy, sex-themed website that covered the club scene in his adopted home town before morphing into the national gossip site TheDirty.com.
[…]
Quayle’s connection to the site has undercut the carefully honed image of a conservative with strong family values, and his inept handling of its disclosure brings up a different association with the Quayle name – his father’s gaffe-prone history.
Meanwhile, Quayle released a new campaign commercial today, in which, he calls Barack Obama “the worst president in history.”
… which is pretty funny.
Quayle’s father, of course, is frequently cited—here and here for example—as among the worst vice presidents in U.S. history.
And Young Benny Quayle himself isn’t exactly going to go down as one of the best congressional candidates in history.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/22/uselections2008.usa
10:05 PM
By the way ... where did the name "Brock Landers" come from?
… Apparently from the film Boogie Nights.
Young Benny Quayle took the name from an interesting character.
I haven’t seen the film recently, but it comes from a film-within-a-film, “Brock Landers: Angels Live In My Town,” in which our hero, the massively endowed Dirk Diggler, casts himself as an omnisexual crime-detecting stud:
Brock Landers: You still hungry?
Jessie St. Vincent: Starving.
Brock: [Unzipping pants] Then feast on that.
The video above is just the fake film credits.
You can see the full raunchy scene with the dialogue here:
8:55 AM
A second (and more important) big unanswered Ben Quayle question
… did wife Tiffany know about his moonlighting gig looking for Scottsdale’s Firstest Foxy Lady?
I read that the man the Sonoran Alliance calls “Benny” Quayle was married “recently.”
Quayle’s double life as the skanky Dirty Scottsdale’s Brock Landers was about three years ago.
8:49 AM
The big unanswered Ben Quayle question
… So, uh, did you ever find the “first foxy lady of Scottsdale?”
By the way, if there’s an original Arizona Republic story on Quayle today I can’t find it on the AZCentral site.
The original Politico story is here.
The second Politico story, in which Quayle admits he lied in the first one, is here.
8:15 AM
A new McCain attack ad against Hayworth
5:59 AM
McCain pulls away from Hayworth
The latest Rasmussen poll sees Dumb increasing his lead over Dumber:
Read down to the other questions asked in the poll, however, and you have to be a little bit concerned about not just the level of the political debate here in Arizona, but the overall ability of residents to process basic information:
Has the new immigration law affected Arizona’s image positively or negatively?
60% Positively
26% Negatively
4% No impact
10% Not sure
or…
Will the new immigration legislation be good or bad for the Arizona economy?
64% Good
17% Bad
9% No impact
10% Not sure
and …
Are economic conditions in the country getting better or worse?
7% Better
72% Worse
18% Staying the same
4% Not sure
7:21 AM
J.D.: "You're a liar!" McCain: "You're a pig!" Tea Party guy: "I want a popsicle!"
(Rewritten and updated, with video embedded.)
The GOP senatorial primary debate in Tucson last night was a sorry spectacle.
PHXated again thought that that bozo J.D. Hayworth came across well. He’s failing at the polls; his ludicrous past as an infomercial pitchman for a skanky company has come back to bite him on the ass; and he looks like … well, he looks like a clown.
Still, each of his answers was coherent (within the confines of the nutty far-right philosophy he was espousing) and energetic, and he came across far stronger, in command and in control of both the physical space and the dialog than McCain.
Here’s the video:
Or you can watch the event on the KUAT web site here.
The moderator, Bill Buckmaster, of the long-running public-affairs show “Arizona Illustrated,” on Tucson’s KUAT, was a caricature of the milquetoasty public broadcasting guy.
He didn’t ask a single tough question.
I mean, I guess I didn’t expect him to ask McCain about the spousal abuse described in the book Game Change, but he could have asked him about some of the terrible decisions he made during that presidential campaign, or even his recent statement that he never considered himself a maverick.
Instead, Buckmaster played entirely to the candidates' own talking points, at one point literally letting the candidates discuss the pressing issue of which was the most conservative.
There were no follow-ups, nothing that asked any of the candidates to deal with political and social realities of the issues facing Arizona.
At the end, completely giving up, he let the candidates each get free time to “set the record straight” about anything else said about them in the debate.
This produced the following exchange:
Hayworth [turning to face McCain]: “John, you wrote the book, Worth the Fighting For. You relayed what happened in South Carolina in 2000….
“You wrote, ‘Given the chance between losing and lying, I chose lying.’ John I’m sorry to say that it appears history is repeating itself here. As you deal with half truths, as you deal with blatant character attacks, as you deal with failing to own up to mistakes you have made that have hurt our nation.
“That’s what I most lament about this campaign.”
McCain [grimacing]: That’s a pretty strong attack there, and I’m tempted to respond.
“But I’m reminded of the advice from my old friend Bob Dole. Never get into a wrestling match with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”
McCain then was given time to yammer on about “doing more for our vets,” though he and Hayworth were both part of the six-year-long Republican reign that produced the pointless war in Iraq, which has had a fairly deleterious affect on quite a few U.S. service people, and the lax oversight of Walter Reed Hospital, which created a big scandal for the Bush administration a few years back.
A minute or two later, the moderator let Jim Deakin, the soi-disant Tea Party candidate, have the last of the final statements. He began:
“It’s been a lot of fun. Next time, popsicles!”
PHXated’s live-blogging of the first Hayworth-McCain debate is here.
6:47 AM
How did the first McCain-Hayworth debate play?
In the Republic, Dan Nowicki wrote:
McCain, the four-term incumbent who first won the Senate seat in 1986, reminded viewers that Hayworth, a former 12-year Arizona congressman, was rejected by his constituents in his final re-election bid in 2006. McCain said that was at least partly because Hayworth was a congressional big spender. And echoing the television attack ads that he has used to pound Hayworth, McCain raised the issue of a questionable 2007 infomercial that Hayworth appeared in for National Grants Conferences, a company that came under fire from consumer advocates after purporting to teach people how to exploit “free” government money programs.
“After he was voted out by his constituents, he became a lobbyist, and after that a talk-show host, and then after that, an infomercial and late-night star,” McCain said of Hayworth. “So he’s certainly had an interesting career.”
For his part, Hayworth, who is trailing McCain in the polls, came well-prepared with multiple anti-McCain one liners and zingers. He repeatedly attacked McCain as a flip-flopper on President George W. Bush’s signature tax cuts, which McCain voted against in 2001 and 2003 but now supports extending. He also blasted McCain as a supporter of “amnesty,” the term Hayworth and other critics use to describe comprehensive immigration reform, and for voting for the 2008 financial bailout.
Hayworth called McCain a “convenient conservative” and a “political shape-shifter” who has “perfected the six-year switch” to fool voters in thinking that he is a conservative while up for re-election.
Howard Fischer writes similar things in the EVT.
Neither analyzed the debate’s quality of the candidates' performance.
To PHXated, Hayworth did a lot better than McCain, from his physical positioning to his voluble answers. McCain seems uncomfortable and mumbling, and recycled platitudes from previous debates. (“Facts are stubborn things,” “There you go again,” etc.)
There’s a very long recap of the debate on the Tucson Citizen site, here.
The writer is Jim Kelley, who seems to be obsessed with the third candidate, whom he calls “Jim.” It’s kinda weird:
The closing statement was the single most important moment for Jim Deakin to hook the voter and close the deal. McCain had absolutely nothing to lose. He was short and to the point delivering what every Arizonan already knows about him and heard for the last 3 years both in the Presidential race and his non-JD bashing radio ads. JD also played it safe and delivered what everyone already knows about him, his very smooth and practiced delivery, born of true oratory experience was non-threatening and inviting. Jim choked. There is no other way to put it. The only spin to put out there is that it was a rookie mistake. He did not practice his delivery or indelibly mark into his memory the message that he and his team crafted together over the last week. He didn’t know whether to try it or just fall back to his standard close. His lack of trust in the team’s crafted message made him hesitate.
NYT take on it here.
10:56 AM
The latest blast at Hayworth from John McCain
The new commercial begins with Hayworth looking his clownish best, and then a bunch of supposed former constituents talking about how lame he was as a congressman.
(I haven’t found it online yet.)
A couple of the comments are questionable. For example, one woman says, “He voted for hundreds of billion of dollars of pork-barrel spending.”
First of all, there aren’t hundreds of billions of dollars in pork in the federal budget. That’s about how much discretionary spending there is in total.
They might be trying to total up all of his budget votes over his ten or twelve years in Congress.
But given that these were Republican budgets during a lot of his tenure—and that McCain probably voted for them too—it hardly seems cricket to tag him with voting for them.
But the most arresting claim in the ad is this:
“He voted for the Bridge to Nowhere!”
Sarah Palin tried to rewrite history in her speech at the GOP convention, but it’s well established she was a supporter of the bridge when she was governor.
7:05 PM
PHXations—Tuesday, June 13, 2010
More on the “All-Star Boycott; this time from Milwaukee:
As Major League Baseball prepares for its All-Star game in California, immigrants-rights protesters are rallying outside the Milwaukee office of Commissioner Bud Selig
They want Selig to move next year’s All-Star game out of Arizona. Tuesday’s rally is part of a campaign to boycott the state after it passed a tough new law on Immigration enforcement.
About two dozen protesters picketed outside downtown Milwaukee’s U.S. Bank building. They chanted and held signs saying, “Move the game,” and “Boycott hate.”
Looks like Mills is ‘Buz-ing’ off:
Buz Mills' campaign manager says the candidate for the Republican nomination for Arizona governor is “suspending” his campaign.
Mills campaign manager Camilla Strongin says Mills is halting his campaigning because the campaign is now focused on immigration and border security, not the jobs and budget issues that drew Mills into the race.
The temperature is supposed to hit 110 today, as high as 114 Thursday.
As the stars of baseball met in Anaheim for this year’s All Star Game, the talk there is of …
…. boycotting next year’s game, scheduled to be played July 12, 2011 at Phoenix’s Chase Field.
From the Republic:
Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Yovani Gallardo spoke in the strongest terms when he said, “If the game is in Arizona, I will totally boycott.”
Detroit Tigers relief pitcher Jose Valverde called it “the stupidest thing you can ever have.”
6:38 PM
The crazy race in the third congressional district
Luige del Puerto in the Arizona Capitol Times (in a story reprinted on the ABC 15 site) takes a look at the fallout from Rep. John Shadegg’s retirement:
Democratic candidate Jon Hulburd shocked everyone when his campaign said it had raised a whopping $750,000 – more than any other candidate in the race has reported so far. More than $250,000 was donated during the second quarter, a very healthy fundraising figure that could pose some problems this fall for whoever emerges from the Republican primary on Aug. 24.
Meanwhile, over on the GOP side?
[T]he Republican contest is shaping up as a true scramble – campaign managers are trying to determine which candidate they need to target, and many candidates are trying to appeal to the same voting bloc, whether defined by geography or ideology.
Political observers have categorized GOP candidates into two tiers, but none of the candidates can be counted out. Anyone could break out from the pack, and it could take as little as 20 percent of the vote to win.
6:27 AM
John McCain in decline, philosophically and physically
That’s the portrait painted in two new looks at the senator.
The big one is a long profile in New York magazine, which among other things suggests he’s taken his challenger in the GOP primary, the knucklehead J.D. Hayworth, far too seriously:
When McCain gets nervous, he speed-dials friends for advice. And that fall, he even called his former top strategist, John Weaver, to ask his opinion.
[…]
Weaver warned McCain that he should ignore Hayworth, that he was training too much attention on a guy who had only 30,000 listeners and appealed to a segment that would never vote for McCain anyway, namely the hard-core anti-immigration wing.
Weaver’s advice was far from unique. Even one of McCain’s oldest and dearest friends, his POW bunkmate at the Hanoi Hilton, Orson Swindle, advised McCain to “just ignore him.”
The other is a scathing piece by Slate’s Jacob Weisberg, “The Saddest Senator: Why John McCain has become so painful to watch”:
To some extent, this is a matter of physical decline. As the inside account of his campaign in [the book] ‘Game Change’ makes clear, fatigue brought out McCain’s cranky side.
With his stiffness from war injuries and scars from cancer surgeries, McCain looks older than a lot of 73-year-olds—and apparently feels older, too.
The other factor may be the reactivation of McCain’s powerful sense of dishonor.
Bear with me here, because what follows is surmise based on long observation rather than hard evidence. But McCain looks to me these days like someone who bears an unacknowledged weight.
If I had to guess, I’d say that weight is his shame over a barely competent presidential campaign and his awful choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate.
6:48 AM
Mary Hayworth comes to J.D.'s defense!
The Hayworth campaign’s new commercial:
To some, the ad show’s J.D. on the defense—when it’s McCain who’s supposed to be in that position.
Ben Smith in Politico:
Former Rep. J.D. Hayworth’s first ad tells you everything you need to know about the contours of the Arizona GOP Senate primary.
To recap: Hayworth is the conservative challenger and Sen. John McCain the incumbent. McCain is also a deeply unpopular figure among the sort of Arizona Republicans who show up to vote in August primaries.
Yet it’s Hayworth who is on defense in his TV debut, a low-budget number apparently airing only on Fox News in Tucson.
Why is a challenger deploying his wife with the soft-lens, my-husband-is-not-perfect line as his first commercial out of the shoot?
Smith’s answer is that McCain has been watching Charlie Crist get crucified in Nevada by challenger Marco Rubio … and has been careful to inoculate himself against the same sorts of attacks.
7:00 AM
National Review endorses McCain, tepidly
The leading doctrinaire conservative magazine can’t muster up enough enthusiasm for Hayworth to overcome its long-standing distrust of McCain.
In the endorsement of the incumbent in the GOP primary, there’s a palpable sense of wistfulness that his challenger wasn’t a little stronger:
Hayworth is, to say the least, not obviously a more exemplary statesman than McCain. On one of the most pressing issues of the day — the need to control federal spending — McCain has had the better record. That Hayworth appeared in infomercials to tell people how to get “free money” from the government underscores the point rather emphatically.
If McCain had a different challenger, we might think differently. But, taken together, these considerations move us to suggest that Arizona Republicans nominate Senator McCain.
Hayworth is a buffoon, of course, but McCain has done dozens of worse things than Hayworth’s infomercial.
The endorsement is already drawing fire from right-0wingers.
9:16 PM
Jan Brewer doubles down on lying
The governor said last week that the majority of illegal immigrants were smuggling drugs.
In the face of the predictable outcry—even John McCain distanced himself from the statement over the weekend—Brewer could have acknowledged an overstatement and moved on.
Instead, she’s doubling down on the lie, getting shriller and making even less sense.
Her original quote:
“The majority of them, in my opinion and I think in the opinion of law enforcement, is that they’re not coming here to work. They’re coming here and they’re bringing drugs, and they’re doing drop houses, and they’re extorting people, and they’re terrorizing the families.”
Asked in an interview whether he agrees that most illegal immigrants are “drug mules,” the Republican senator said: “No.”
With the media continuing to press her on the statement, Brewer’s office released a slightly unhinged followup. From the PBJ:
“There has been some media attention in the last several hours regarding statements I made this morning regarding the level of drug and crime activity being perpetrated by illegal immigrants coming into and residing in Arizona,“ Brewer’s said in the statement. "The simple truth is that the majority of human smuggling in our state is under the direction of the drug cartels, which are by definition smuggling drugs.”
Notice how she’s blurring the issue from “illegal immigrants are smuggling drugs” to “they are being smuggled by drug cartels.”
The story continues:
“It is common knowledge that Mexican drug cartels have merged human smuggling with drug trafficking. For example, the Los Angeles Times on March 23, 2009, reported, ‘The business of smuggling humans across the Mexican border has been brisk, with many thousands coming across every year. But smugglers affiliated with the drug cartels have taken the enterprise to a new level — and made it more violent — by commandeering much of the operation from independent coyotes, according to these officials and recent congressional testimonies.’ This article and many federal government reports have drawn the same conclusions.
“The human rights violations that have taken place victimizing immigrants and their families are abhorrent. Border crossers are used by drug cartels as commodities. Mexican drug cartels have merged human smugglers who use their expertise in gathering intelligence on border patrols, logistics and communication devices to get around even tighter controls. U.S. border officials have stated that traffickers are gaining control of much of the illegal passage of immigrants from Mexico to the United States.”
As with so many debates in this state, the real issue here isn’t what it seems.
Of course Brewer is lying. She knows it’s not true that a majority of illegal immigrants are smuggling drugs. We know from numerous government reports that a big chunk of them are just people who’ve overstayed their visa, and we know that most of the rest are doing menial labor, a lot of it outside in incredible heat, just from simple observation.
The real issue is the state of politics in this state. Brewer’s campaign strategy is now apparent. She’s just going to repeat her mantra:
“Illegal immigration, illegal immigration, drugs, violence, illegal immigration, drugs, violence, illegal immigration, drugs, violence, illegal immigration, drugs, violence, child porn, tax cuts blah blah blah.”
And the question for the future of the state is whether Terry Goddard can come up with an effective enough campaign to combat it.
7:16 AM
J.D. Hayworth apologizes for that sleazy informercial he did
A few days ago, J.D. was standing by the patently skanky commercial:
“I always say about any product or service, one of the staples I learned growing up is caveat emptor, ‘buyer beware.’ I think that is a given in any commercial endeavor – I would certainly hope in this one. But yeah, I’m a broadcaster, and yeah, I appeared in this, and yes, it was a job. And that’s that.”
(You can see it below.)
Today, he’s running for the hills:
“I should not have made the ad. It was a mistake. I believed, as did former Congressman J.C.Watts, this to be a reputable firm, but I did not completely check out the organization. I hope voters will look past a video presentation made three years ago and instead look at the issues confronting us in 2010.”
Here’s the best parts of the infomercial in question:
10:22 AM
PHXations—Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Arizona Democrats are asking the state Supreme Court to disqualify two GOP candidates:
Democrats on Monday asked the state Supreme Court to overturn a judge’s decision that kept two Republicans on the Aug. 24 ballot, even though the judge found they had broken the law in getting there.
The appeal comes in the wake of a ruling that state Sen. John Huppenthal, a Republican candidate for state superintendent of public instruction, and Bob Thomas, who is seeking the GOP nomination for state Senate in central Phoenix, violated the law when they collected signatures on their nominating petitions.
The two collected signatures before they had formed their campaign committees, Judge Robert Oberbillig found, which is against state election law.
But the punishment for that violation is a fine, he ruled, not removal from the ballot, which is the remedy the state Democratic Party had sought.
Party officials then turned to the state’s highest court for an appeal. Spokeswoman Jennifer Johnson said it would be hard to assign a dollar value to signatures that were collected outside of the official period. A more fitting punishment would be removal from the ballot, she said
Arizona’s Border Security is getting a $50 million boost:
A new $50 million pot is available to local law enforcement in Arizona and along the U.S.-Mexico border for border-security projects.
The money comes from a $94 million settlement that Attorney General Terry Goddard’s office reached with Western Union earlier this year to end a seven-year investigation into drug smugglers' use of wire companies to move money across the border.
Goddard’s office sent out grant applications Monday to city, county and state law-enforcement agencies in Arizona, Texas, California and New Mexico. Each state is guaranteed at least $7 million, Goddard said.
The money can be used to attack the issue of cross-border smuggling of drugs, people, weapons or money, he said. The drugs and people come north into the U.S., and the weapons and money go south to fuel the cartels' operatio
Read more at the AZ Daily Star.
Heat City is reporting that the Mexican government has joined the fight to stop Arizona’s immigration law:
The Mexican government formally joined the fight to stop Arizona’s new immigration law on Monday, telling a U.S. court the law “threatens to poison the well” of diplomacy between the two nations and exposes Mexican citizens to racial profiling by police.
In a 28-page brief (pdf) filed in the U.S. District Court of Arizona, lawyers for Mexico said the creation of the law, widely known as S.B. 1070, “has been closely followed at the highest levels of the Mexican government and throughout Mexican society.”
The government said it believes the Arizona law, which among other things makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally, violates the U.S. Constitution. It asked the court to throw the law out entirely.
More here.
Border agents captured some elusive prey on the border: More than 100 piñatas of Disney characters, according to an AP story on the KTAR site:
DOUGLAS, Ariz. – It was no fiesta on the Arizona-Mexico border for the driver of a shipment of pinatas that looked like Disney characters.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Rob Daniels says officers at the Douglas port of entry stopped a tractor-trailer coming from Mexico for further inspection on Friday.
Officers found the tractor-trailer was loaded with papier-mache items, including 108 pinatas in the likeness of Disney characters on their way to Thornton, Colo.
The story quotes a border official saying, stopping counterfeit goods is “a vital element in national security.”
NYT story on the piñata underground here.
12:22 PM
J.D.: Say it isn't so!
From a killer Dan Nowicki post this morning:
Republican Senate challenger J.D. Hayworth appeared in a 2007 television infomercial in which he helped convince viewers that they could rake in big bucks by attending seminars that would teach them how to apply for federal grants that they wouldn’t have to pay back.
National Grants Conferences, the Florida-based company that hosted the classes and produced the informercial, has faced criticism from multiple state attorneys general and Better Business Bureaus.
Hayworth, a former Arizona congressman who is running against incumbent Sen. John McCain, R-
Ariz., in the Aug. 24 GOP primary, made the infomercial after losing his U.S. House seat in the 2006 election. References to his TV appearance on behalf of National Grants Conferences appear in his Wikipedia entry, on the Internet Movie Database and other places on the Web. But the footage was unavailable. Highlights of Hayworth’s appearance are now posted on YouTube.com at this link.
The infomercial promotes seminars that ostensibly instruct attendees how to get the “free money grants.” Tucson TV station KVOA did an investigation of National Grants Conferences that you can watch here. The TV station’s investigative team found that the workshops cost from $999 to $1,200 and federal government grants really aren’t even available to individuals.
Politico story on the infomercial here.
2:01 PM
PHXations—Monday, June 21, 2010
Looks like Republican Attorney General candidate Tom Horne has a short memory:
In a series of annual reports for his law firm, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne wrongly denied having a bankruptcy in his past.
Reports filed with the Arizona Corporation Commission from 1997 to 2000 for Horne’s law firm show that when asked if any partner in the firm had ever been a partner in a business that went bankrupt, Horne checked “no” and signed the form.
In fact, Horne was the president of T.C. Horne & Co., an investment firm that went bankrupt in 1970 and led to him receiving a lifetime trading ban from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
[…]
Horne, who is seeking the Republican nomination for attorney general, said he regretted not disclosing the bankruptcy. He said he likely made the error because the bankruptcy happened long ago.
“I didn’t think about it because it was 40 years ago,” he said.
More here
Today, Democrat Gubernatorial candiate confirmed one of the the worst kept secrets in Arizona political circles: campaign manager Rodd McLeod is leaving.
McLeod, who joined Goddard’s campaign in January, said he expected to leave when his firm’s contract with the campaign ended on June 30. He said the move was not prompted by any disagreements with Goddard or the campaign.
“It’s been a great honor to work with the attorney general and be part of this campaign,” McLeod said. “I think we’re positioned to do very well in November, particularly when you look at the rough primary on the other side and the infrastructure we have been able to build.”
[…]
“As the campaign’s contract with MSHC (Partners Inc., McLeod’s firm,) ends and McLeod returns to fulfill commitments to other clients, he leaves a strong infrastructure for the next stage of the campaign,” campaign spokeswoman Janey Pearl said in a press release. “McLeod continues to manage during the transition. Goddard for Governor will have other announcements in the coming weeks.”
The campaign announced the addition of political director Aaron Marquez and Southern Arizona director Catherine Nichols. The campaign also hired consulting firm Strother Strategies for media consulting and the firm WebStrong Group for new media and social networking.
Via Arizona Capitol Times.
The Republic fronts a story discussing the efficacy of Joe Arpaio’s crime sweeps.
It notes that besides the illegal immigrants it catches few actual criminals:
[T]here is no clear data demonstrating the crime-fighting effectiveness of such policies. While it succeeds in locating illegal immigrants, its effectiveness in combating major crimes is questionable, and there are concerns that such sweeps draw resources away from activities that do combat major crimes.
Advocates of the sweeps say their value is largely in discouraging illegal immigrants from remaining in the community.
However, critics suggest they simply scare legal and illegal immigrants alike and drive a wedge between members of the community and law enforcement.
Catching up on an odd bit of election news from late last week:
A longtime Phoenix lawmaker running for justice of the peace has been kicked off the ballot.
A Maricopa County Superior Court judge on Thursday ruled that Democratic Sen. Ken Cheuvront collected nominating signatures on the wrong form.
Cheuvront used forms for a nonpartisan race, but justice of the peace is a partisan office.
Cheuvront, a term-limited state senator, is also the proprietor of Cheuvront restaurant on Central.
2:08 PM
The Sonoran Alliance goes on the attack—against McCain
The right-wing blog supports J.D. Hayworth in the GOP senate primary.
Yesterday it posted this left-wing attack piece on McCain’s friendliness with lobbyists, the ones he talks about being so stridently opposed to:
… all to the tune of the “Friends” theme. The maker of the video is Robert Greenwald, who has done a series of contentious documentaries on Fox News, Wal-Mart, and Iraq war profiteers.
7:34 AM
PHXations—Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Searching for the ‘Moderate Middle’:
There’s a fundraiser tonight that looks to boost the fortunes of what might be considered the “moderate middle” in the next Legislature.
Greater Phoenix Leadership is throwing a no-host fundraiser at the Arizona Biltmore to enrich the coffers of 12 legislative candidates in races “whose outcomes could make or break the business environment next year,” according to the GPL invite.
Those pivotal candidates, in GPL’s view, are a mix of Republicans and Democrats, incumbents and newcomers. Business boosters attending the fundraiser are being asked to contribute a minimum $2,500, with the money split between the candidates.
The candidates are Republican state Senate candidates Rich Crandall, Adam Driggs, Bill Konopnicki, Sen. John Nelson and Michele Reagan, along with Democratic Senate hopeful Justin Johnson (son of former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson) who is hoping to oust GOP Sen. Linda Gray.
On the House side, beneficiaries are Republicans Karen Fann, Kate Brophy McGee, Rep. Amanda Reeve, Eric Ulis and Doug Sposito, and Democrat Rep. Eric Meyer.
The AP is reporting that Arizona is being sued over the legislatures raid on clean air funds:
A lawsuit has been filed challenging the Arizona Legislature’s raid on lottery money that has been earmarked for public transportation since the early 1990s.
The Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest says its suit responds to a budget bill passed during a special Legislative session in March. The bill halted yearly payments of $8 million to $10 million that had gone to public transportation since the 1990s.
The lottery money helped local transportation agencies expand service as a way to lower air pollution from personal vehicles and meet federal Clean Air Act requirements.
The lawsuit announced on Tuesday asks a federal judge to order the lottery money payments reinstated.
Grim tales from the drug wars in Mexico from the Republic’s Chris Hawley today.
The focus is on the cartel’s war against police officers in the country. Lots of gory details, and this accounting of the plain facts:
In all, 324 police officers and soldiers have been killed so far in 2010, compared with 511 in all of 2009, according to the Reforma newspaper.
“This is not beginner stuff,” said Samuel Gonzalez Ruiz, a law professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “They’re getting more sophisticated and spending more time training.”
Also in the Republic: Joe Arpaio is planning another immigration sweep:
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he plans to launch his 16th crime and immigration sweep on July 30, the day after Arizona’s new immigration law is set to take effect.
The sheriff’s office hasn’t revealed where it will conduct the sweep.
Accounts of the GOP gubernatorial primary last night;
*The AZ Daily Star’s Rhonda Bodfield.
*The Capitol Times AZ Jeremy Duda.
*The Payson Roundup’s Alexis Bechman.
I can’t find video of it yet; would appreciate the tip if anyone else finds it. The video can be found on the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections site.
10:01 AM
Tom Horne: "I'll stick to my own facts!"
Heat City has a hilarious post about outgoing state superintendant Tom Horne, now a candidate for attorney general.
He’s been going around saying a fence would work along the U.S.-Mexico border because Israel’s fence in the West Bank has “totally put a stop to terrorism.”
There are of course about 19 differences between the two situations that render the comparison risible.
Nick Martin takes a look at just the issue of stopping terrorism, and finds that Israel is still chronicling scores of acts each month. Martin called Horne for a response and relates this exchange:
“I think that was pretty common knowledge,” Horne said. “It’s been all over the newspapers.”
Asked which newspapers had reported it, Horne could not name one.
[…]
But instead of changing his mind after hearing the facts, Horne stuck to his story. He said he remained certain of his claim’s accuracy despite what the Israeli government reported.
“I’ll stand by it,” he said. “I’m talking about something that there is pretty common knowledge about.”
Full post here.
7:55 AM
PHXations—Tuesday, June 8, 2010
An ABC News/Washington Post poll suggests that support for the Tea Party movement is weakening:
“Do you have a favorable or unfavorable impression of the political movement known as the Tea Party?” the survey asked.
Thirty-six percent gave thumbs-up to the Tea Party, while 50 percent had a “Somewhat” or “Strongly” unfavorable view. Fourteen percent had no opinion.
Support for the right-wing populist movement was down from 41 percent in March.
Via GOOD)
/yaa
Buying local has big impacts:
A study released today found that SCF Arizona, the state’s largest workers’ compensation insurer, had a $528.3 million economic impact in Arizona in 2009.
The Phoenix company sourced 82 percent of its goods and services from other Arizona companies, according to the study released by Local First Arizona, a nonprofit that encourages Arizona businesses to buy locally.
Kimber Lanning, executive director of Local First, said the purpose of the study was to demonstrate how one major employer can have a significant impact on Arizona’s economy when buying from other Arizona-based companies. She said this is the first fully scientific study that measures the economic impact of a single employer.
SCF is in the process of becoming a private company. Gov. Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1045 into law in May, directing SCF to become a mutual insurance company, which means it would be owned by its policyholders. Created in 1925 as a state agency, SCF Arizona covers more than 35,000 businesses and has about a 40 percent market share in the state.
/yaa
The Republic reports on one benefit of SB 1070:
In the seven weeks since Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed Arizona’s tough new immigration law, there has been a sharp increase in the number of Latinos registering to vote as Democrats, party officials say, jumping from about 100 a week before to 500 now.
Many of those registering are young Latino citizens whose parents may be undocumented.
“Before, it used to be hard,” said Luis Heredia, executive director of the Arizona Democratic Party. “Now, they are just saying, ‘Can you give me a form?’ or, ‘I am already registered, but I know someone who isn’t.’”
Regardless of their political affiliation, ethnicity or reason, it is promising to see a new generation of citizens getting involved in politics.
/yaa
In the Arizona Capitol Times, Jeremy Duda reports on the Supreme Court’s administrative decision that effectively blocks matching funds for this election cycle:
The U.S. Supreme Court blocked Arizona’s Clean Elections system from distributing matching funds, throwing a number of high profile campaigns into disarray just weeks before candidates were to start receiving money.
The court on June 8 granted a request by the Goldwater Institute to halt a recent ruling of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that declared matching funds constitutional. The justices ordered that the distribution of matching funds be put on hold until it can hear a full appeal of the matching funds system.
Goldwater Institute attorney Nick Dranias said he doesn’t expect the court to hear the appeal in McComish v. Bennett until around October, meaning matching funds are essentially finished for 2010.
The primary election is Aug. 24. The general election is Nov. 2.
/yaa
Hall & Oates have joined the list of artists boycotting Arizona. From the PBJ:
“Private Eyes” won’t be watching Phoenix next month.
1980s rock duo Daryl Hall and John Oates have canceled their July 2 concert at Chase Field because of Arizona’s contentious immigration law. They had been scheduled to perform after the Arizona Diamondbacks’ game with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
6:51 PM
PHXations—Tuesday, June 1
Brewer, Obama to meet on immigration
President Obama intends to meet with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Thursday, a White House official told FoxNews.com, after criticism mounted over reports the president wouldn’t be able to meet her while she is in Washington this week.
More on FOXNews.com
Arizonans to vote on medical marijuana:
A statewide measure allowing for medical marijuana clinics to be opened in Arizona has qualified for the November ballot.
The Arizona Medical Marijuana Project said Tuesday the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office confirmed the necessary 153,365 voter signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot. If approved, the Arizona Department Health Services would regulate medical marijuana clinics in state. Patients suffering from conditions or diseases such as Parkinson’s, cancer, multiple sclerosis and HIV/AIDS would be able to buy pot for medical and pain alleviating uses.
A different legislature? One can only dream.
Even if all of the incumbents running for the state Legislature win their bids for re-election on Nov. 2, the Capitol will be a very different place next year.
Twenty-four lawmakers have reached the end of their four consecutive two-year term limit and cannot run for their same seat; another 15 have announced they will not be seeking re-election.
Alas, I’m not holding my breath. In Arizona politics it seems that the more things change, the more they say the same…
Courts rejects Goldwater Institute… again
The U.S. Supreme Court on June 1 refused to block the distribution of so-called “matching funds” to candidates running for office under Arizona’s Clean Elections law.
The court denial of the request filed by the Goldwater Institute and some candidates left the door open for a full appeal of a lower court decision.
That April 21 decision upheld the parts of the law that provide extra taxpayer support for publicly funded candidates who are outspent by privately funded opponents or independent groups.
Let’s give it credit: The Arizona Republic covers dog news as well as any paper in America.
Dogs on Twitter, dogs on Facebook, “Posh pads for pampered pooches” …
Today, the lede story in the Living section story about a doggie named Gabriel who … (sniff) died.
The hedline is “Gabriel gets his wings.”
The web hedline is “Gabriel’s Angels therapy dog left indelible paw prints on children’s hearts.”
The story says that, since he died, Gabriel has gained 1000 new followers on Twitter.
It’s been three years since noble Bandit was left in a Chandler cop car, which the Valley’s media outlets scrambled the jets to cover over a period of what seemed like months.
Arizona’s new one percent sales tax goes into effect today.
As we drive around in our Hummers and SUVs to this Starbucks or that Whole Foods, let’s remember that poor and working people will be buying their kids one percent less food, taking their families out for one percent less fun, and come fall, spending one percent less on back-to-school clothes.
But it’s just one percent. It’s not like these folk weren’t already under enormous pressure living in an economically backwards state whose jobs base, spurred by an unsustainable housing bubble and nothing else, wasn’t already in the toilet.
Oh, wait …
5:34 PM
Politico trashes John McCain's campaign
The McCain-Hayworth primary race makes the site’s list of the year’s worst campaigns, emphases added:
Thanks to a baggage-laden opponent, Sen. John McCain’s campaign may not be a flop electorally: he leads in every poll against former Rep. J.D. Hayworth ahead of this summer’s primary.
But in his desperate bid to hang onto his Senate seat, McCain has already lost something — his well-cultivated image as a different kind of politician who dared to take on his party and speak difficult truths.
Racing to get to the right, he has unapologetically discarded any stance which may be unhelpful in a conservative-dominated primary, most notably his leadership on immigration reform and climate change. In the not-too-distant past he spoke passionately about both issues as matters of conscience, to hell with the political consequences.
But it’s not just the issues, per se, it’s the lengths McCain is going to shed his former political skin that have some of his former advisers shaking their heads about what he’s doing to get six more years in Washington. With no hint of the irony he was once known for, and apparent amnesia about the White House campaign he waged two years ago, he said he never actually considered himself “a maverick.” And after openly mocking conservatives who were obsessed with simply building more fences on the border — “I think the fence is least effective. But I’ll build the goddamned fence if they want it” — he’s now airing an ad in which he’s seen walking along said fence and promising to “complete the danged fence.”
It may be enough to fend off Hayworth, but by seeming to do anything to win re-election McCain has torched one of the most famous brands in modern American politics.
10:54 AM
Buz Mills: I'm a "real man"
We’re deeply indebted to Heat City for this screen shot of a Buz Mills campaign mailer:
Mills’ campaign manager, who, by the way, is also a woman, denied the flier was meant to be sexist and blamed the poor word choice on a mix up at the print shop. Camilla Strongin told the Guardian the mailer should have said it’s time to hire “a real leader” for the job.
Brewer is the third woman in a row – and the fourth in Arizona history – to occupy the governor’s office.
7:17 AM
J.D. Hayworth gets smacked by McCain—and then E.J Montini
We like J.D. Hayworth.
Not personally, but we’d like to see him knock John McCain out of the race in the GOP primary and be easier pickings for a Democrat in November.
Not so much because we favor Democrats as that we think Arizona needs a higher quality of elected representative and we think McCain is a bad person and a bad senator.
Anyway, J.D., who is, let’s face it, a buffoon of the first order, managed to turn himself into a joke recently by declaiming for some reason or another that the U.S. didn’t declare war on Germany during the Second World War.
(We assume it had something to do with arguing that it’s OK that America has been fighting wars for decades now without formally declaring it. This is of course inconsistent with the right-wing mantra that the constitution should be interpreted strictly.)
That made Hayworth a staple of the news shows for a day, and the Mccain campaign capitalized on it immediately, putting together a video mocking Hayworth you can see below.
Anyway, Hayworth smacked back at McCain today with a press release. Unfortunately, they sent it to E.J. Montini, who noticed the release misspelled McCain’s name in the hedline—and had a dropped word besides.
Sigh.
1:26 PM
All of a sudden John McCain is into pork!
I think there’s a new McCain for Senate ad out—I saw it on Letterman last night, but I can’t find it on his web site or on You Tube.
Anyway, it’s bragging how John McCain brings military-spending dollars to Arizona.
One hundred thousand jobs [the voice-over intone]. Nine billion dollars a year. Our military bases are vital for the economy of Arizona. And so is Senator John McCain.
As senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain’s on the front lines of protecting Arizona’s military bases.
John McCain keeps us and Arizona strong.
Meanwhile, his web site is touting a new attack ad on J.D. Hayworth … for voting for too many earmarks.
9:16 AM
The Washington Post says J.D. Hayworth might be a beneficiary of last night's election results
Writes Chris Cillizza, who does the paper’s blog The Fix:
Ken Buck/J.D. Hayworth/Sharron Angle: Buck, Hayworth and Angle — running in Republican Senate primaries in Colorado, Arizona and Nevada, respectively — are all making a direct pitch to supporters of the tea party movement. Ophthalmologist Rand Paul’s surprisingly strong victory on Tuesday night and his crediting of the tea party for that victory will almost certainly embolden those who see themselves as part of the cause in other parts of the country. The tea party to date has been somewhat haphazard in the primary races it chooses to target — yes to Florida Senate, no to Illinois Senate — and so it’s not likely that all of the trio mentioned above will benefit from the increased intensity. But, now that the tea party movement has the taste of winning in its collective mouth, there will almost certainly be a push to find the next Kentucky Senate race.
Meanwhile, the latest Rasmussen poll gives John McCain a 12-point lead over Hayworth.
Here’s Pollster.com’s trend map on the race:
4:34 PM
John McCain, at the epicenter of a crisis: "Uh, I'll just listen"
You’ll remember the day in 2008 the financial system collapsed and John McCain suspended his presidential campaign and ran back to DC to take charge.
As PHXated has noted previously, then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s account of the day showed that McCain’s effect on the meetings was essentially that of a large pile of potato sacks.
Now a new book on the first year of the Obama administration by Jonathan Alter tells a similar tale. Here’s an account of it in today’s New York Times:
> Barack Obama demonstrated his economic prowess at an extraordinary White House meeting several weeks before he was even elected president. As Jonathan Alter tells it in “The Promise: President Obama, Year One” (Simon & Schuster), this breakout performance occurred at a Sept. 25, 2008, confab requested by the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain.
The meeting was a calculated gambit by Mr. McCain to prove his leadership abilities after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. But the book says that when Mr. Obama asked, “What do you think, John?” Mr. McCain feebly joked his way out of an answer, saying, “I’ll just listen.”
Later, Mr. Alter says, Mr. McCain acknowledged that he had not yet read a three-page outline of the controversial $700 billion bailout plan by Henry M. Paulson Jr., then the Treasury secretary.
President George W. Bush was “poorly informed and detached,” the book says. But Mr. Obama, who had read Mr. Paulson’s plan and copious amounts of related material, stepped into the breach. He gave a cogent overview of the crisis and declared that the Democrats were close to agreement with Mr. Paulson on a deal to approve the bailout.
When he was done, Mr. Alter reports, “a Republican sitting some distance down the long table whispered to a pair of Democratic senators, ‘Everyone here is ready to vote for Obama, including the Republicans.’ ”
See also PHXated’s “The case against John McCain.”
11:02 AM
A new poll: Hayworth closing in on McCain
The new Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll has some interesting numbers.
They show plainly that, six months out, the Democrats' best chance for taking the Senate seat will be if J.D. Hayworth beats McCain in the GOP primary.
According to the poll, McCain beats the likely Democrat, Rodney Glassman, 48 to 35, with 17 percent undecided.
Between Hayworth and Glassman, the race is a real race… 43 for Hayworth, 42 for Glassman.
There’s a four percent margin of error in the poll.
But … can Hayworth actually beat McCain? It would seem a longshot.
McCain is unquestionably a bad senator, a bad person, and has squandered his dishonest-but-effectively-created image as a moderate and maverick by pandering to the vicious Arizona right
(For details, see PHXated’s “The Case Against John McCain,” a comprehensive look back at his career.)
Unfortunately, though, none of these are actually detriments in the Republican primary in a state like Arizona.
But the new polls shows conclusively that his popularity is dropping even there.
48 to 36 is still a good advantage for McCain, but it's four points less than he was polling a month ago.
The survey did a comprehensive look at all Arizona politicians, too.
McCain’s unfavorable numbers statewide are now about 50 percent.
He’s more unpopular than Hayworth, which has to be considered something of an achievement.
Most particularly, he has very high unfavorables among Democrats and independents … 82 percent and 60 percent, respectively.
But of course, he’s be a much more formidable opponent in November than Hayworth, a buffoon who could be made mincemeat of if Glassman—at this point still a political cipher—was up to the task.
Here are the overall numbers for Arizona politicians:
8:11 AM
Will Arpaio run? Brahm Resnik says no
The reasons are obvious, the News 12 anchor says.
The Supes will appoint a successor who will undue everything Arpaio has done and make his life miserable… and he might not win the general, even if he mops up the primary:
But Arpaio’s vaunted poll numbers slipped as the investigations of his office came to light. He has provided a wealth of negative headlines and sound bites that would be joyfully exploited by the likely Democratic nominee Terry Goddard.
He would appear to many voters as a candidate with no real interest in running the governor’s office (“the governor gets other people to do those things,” he said Friday). Who would those “other people” be?
In a debate he would appear out of touch and, perhaps, at 77, not up to the job.
Meanwhile, the PBJ, citing sources, says Arpaio will announce he’s not running today:
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio will announce this afternoon he is not running for governor this year, sources say.
Arpaio has been contemplating a run in the Republican primary for some time, but four sources familiar with the decision say the controversial sheriff will not run. An official announcement is expected this afternoon.
The Business Journal story goes out of its way to note that ABC-15 reported last week that the sheriff would run.
More: Greg Sargent’s WashPost Plum Line blog says the same thing:
But a source close to Arpaio, a leading advocate of the law who’s despised by immigrants’ rights groups, essentially told me just now that he’s not going to do it.
I’m told that Arpaio, the Sheriff of Maricopa County, will not be holding a press conference today, and will only be issuing a one-page statement at 4 P.M. eastern time explaining his decision. Asked if this meant he isn’t running, a source close to him said: “That would be a smart reading of the game plan here.”
5:58 PM
ABC 15 is reporting that Arpaio will "likely" run for governor
Reports the station’s Josh Bernstein, choosing his words carefully:
PHOENIX – Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is expected to announce Monday if he’ll run for Arizona governor.
Several sources confirm to the ABC15 Investigators that Arpaio has already made a decision, and will likely run for the office.
In a news conference after this story was first published, the Sheriff said he was still weighing his options, but also that he would in fact have an announcement on Monday.
Arpaio has flirted with running for governor in the past, but always ultimately pulled back.
While his partisans bruit about his high approval ratings, in fact his electoral support has dropped with each successive race. In 2008 he won with 55 percent of the vote against a fairly uncompelling candidate and then only after a remarkably dirty campaign.
Here’s an Arizona Capital Times report on a recent poll that showed Terry Goddard competitive with any Republican opponent:
The poll, by the North Carolina-based firm Public Policy Polling, showed Goddard, the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor, with slim leads over incumbent Gov. Jan Brewer and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The poll, which surveyed 803 voters from April 23-25, showed him beating Republican candidates Dean Martin, Buz Mills and John Munger by wider margins as well.
Goddard led both Brewer and Arpaio by 47-to-44 percent margins. Both hypothetical matchups fell within the poll’s 3.4 percent margin of error. Arpaio has said he is considering a run for governor but has not declared as a candidate.
6:52 AM
New Public Policy Poll: McCain over Hayworth by 11 points.
From Pollster.com:
Public Policy Polling (D)
4/23-25/10; 387 likely Republican primary voters, 5% margin of error
Mode: Automated phone
Arizona
2010 Senate: Republican Primary
46% McCain, 35% Hayworth, 7% Deakin
Note that automated phone polling is not ideal.
Meanwhile, the Republic has posted a local poll from Behavior Research Center:
McCain leads Hayworth 54 percent to 28 percent with another 18 percent undecided.
In a potential general election battle against former Tucson Vice Mayor Rodney Glassman, the leading Democratic Senate candidate, McCain is ahead 46 percent to 24 percent with a significant 30 percent “uncommitted,” the poll says.
Hayworth also leads Glassman, who is not very well-known around the state yet, by 37 percent to 30 percent with 33 percent “uncommitted.”
This poll has a 5.7 percent margin of error; the two margins of error combined mean that both could still be quote-unquote correct.
Here’s Pollster.com’s current chart on the race:
11:06 AM
A new poll: Glassman can beat Hayworth
A new poll shows the obvious: That J.D. Hayworth might be easy pickings for the Democrats in November:
2010 Senate
49% McCain ( R ), 33% Glassman ( D )
42% Glassman ( D ), 39% Hayworth ( R )
Note that Hayworth has an incredibly high unfavorable rating:
Favorable / Unfavorable
Rodney Glassman: 7 / 15
J.D. Hayworth: 23 / 50
The source is Public Policy Polling, out of North Carolina. Its release on the poll stresses this:
Raleigh, N.C. – John McCain might still beat Barack Obama handily were there a redo of the 2008 election in McCain’s home state, but the senator’s constituents now view Obama’s job performance more favorably than they do that of their longtime senator. 45% of Arizona voters like the job Obama is doing, to 51% who disapprove. While that may seem bad, only 34% approve of how McCain is handling his job to 55% who do not. Republicans only barely approve, 48-39, with independents down at 28-58.
Emphasis added. Doesn’t this lend support to PHXated’s pet theory, which is that Democrats need to adopt a carom strategy for the fall, helping Hayworth beat McCain, so they’ll have an easier target in November?
Pollster.com account here. One of the commenters says that the company will release numbers on specifically the GOP primary tomorrow.
11:29 AM
1Randy Parraz is announcing for the Dem senate primary
Politico reports that Randy Parraz is entering the Democratic primary for John McCain’s senate seat.
Parraz is a longtime activist against Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
From Politico:
An Arizona civil rights advocate jumped into the state’s Senate race Monday, pointing to the strict anti-illegal immigration law just signed by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer as a central theme of his campaign.
Randy Parraz joins a Democratic primary field that includes just one other candidate, businessman and Tucson City Councilman Rodney Glassman. And Christina Martinez, a spokeswoman for Parraz, said the new immigration law was a major factor driving his decision to run.
“This was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she said. “For many of us, our spirit has become broken. People don’t have the will to take the lead and challenge these folks, so we’re relying on Randy to do it.
12:43 PM
The jihadist hiding in the McCain campaign sign
Can you see it?
His beady red eyes and menacing turban?
He’s even wrapping himself in our flag to disguise his foul intentions.
Here’s a close-up:
(h/t: PHXated reader D.W.)
12:26 PM
The case against John McCain
Arizona’s senior senator has a lingering image as an unusual politician—one who will take the hard stance for what’s right, or who will team up with the other side on difficult issues that are in the public’s best interest. The McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill and his moves toward comprehensive immigration reform are two good examples of this.
The trouble with John McCain is that this aspect of his career and personality is a tiny one. It is far outstripped by myriad and crippling personal and political flaws.
As McCain approaches a campaign for his fifth term as a senator, Arizonans have their best chance yet to throw this phony out.
If you’re curious about McCain, PHXated has created this handy guide to his decidedly unbrilliant career.
It’s a portrait of the real McCain, the one that’s been suppurating under the surface of his PR façade.
I. He’s a right-winger.
McCain’s moderate image is a fraud. As noted below, it surfaced only after he got his hand caught in the corruption cookie jar.
But given the chance he will always come back to his real values, which embrace the least-generous impulses in the American psyche; a belligerent, unthinking recklessness abroad; leaving the country’s most defenseless to fend for themselves; and, in general, resisting change any way possible.
He’s an abortion fetishist. (He even mocked the concept of the “health of the mother” during a presidential debate.) He’s a stalwart supporter of the American anti-sex brigade. (While having shown himself as quite the ladies man himself.) He’s against gay marriage and against even letting gays serve openly in the armed forces. (Again, after decades of behaving like a goon himself in the service.) He was doggedly against establishing a holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. He supported the vicious Nicaraguan contras.
He’s voted for tax cuts for the rich just about every chance he got, and he didn’t do anything to stop the anti-regulation brigade from giving a green light to the demolition derby that destroyed the country’s economy. He voted against the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. He voted to ban desecration of the flag, years after the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional; and he voted for the cruel bill that made it harder for people to file bankruptcy. (That was just before the economy his party destroyed drove untold thousands into the poorhouse.)
His incessant blabbering about the surge ignores the facts that a) we shouldn’t have been in Iraq in the first place and b) that the war had been utterly mismanaged to that point. He’s against withdrawing troops from Iraq, now, of course, and has always voted to confirm ideologues— Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, Alito and Roberts—to the Supreme Court.
II. He’s reckless.
Sarah Palin today is a wildly amusing character, and one who promises to disrupt Republican Party presidential race enjoyably in 2012.
But the idea of her being a 72–year-old man’s heartbeat away from the presidency is less funny.
Has any recent move by any politician of either party has had the potential to endanger America more?
Obama (himself a relatively untested figure) could have crashed and burned during the election. McCain could well be president right now—and be facing health problems.
The rash act was part of a pattern. During the 2008 crisis, as the economy tanked, McCain suddenly ended his campaign, cancelled an appearance on Letterman, made a detour to an interview with Katie Couric, and then rushed to Washington to… read some lines off an index card, as Henry Paulson recounts in his new memoir.
What a bozo, right?
Well, that’s the impression he gives to those of us on the left.
Maybe we’re being unfair.
Let’s hear from people closer to him.
Amazingly, those on the right have an even deeper sense of the man’s flaws. Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone:
At least three of McCain’s GOP colleagues have gone on record to say that they consider him temperamentally unsuited to be commander in chief. [Bob] Smith, the former senator from New Hampshire, has said that McCain’s “temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him.” Sen. Domenici of New Mexico has said he doesn’t “want this guy anywhere near a trigger.” And Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi weighed in that "the thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded.
Those are the guys on his side!
III. He’s a jerk to women, and he cheats on his wife.
McCain humiliated his first wife, whose name was Carol. Stories of his running around are legion.
Rolling Stone published “a devastating look back at McCain’s personal and political careers in 2008”: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain. The story was called “Make Believe Maverick" and was written by Tim Dickinson.
Here’s what he wrote about McCain’s two marriages:
If heroism is defined by physical suffering, Carol McCain is every bit her ex-husband’s equal. Driving alone on Christmas Eve 1969, she skidded out on a patch of ice and crashed into a telephone pole. She would spend six months in the hospital and undergo 23 surgeries. The former model McCain bragged of to his buddies in the POW camp as his “long tall Sally” was now five inches shorter and walked with crutches.
By any standard, McCain treated her contemptibly. Whatever his dreams of getting laid in Rio, he got plenty of ass during his command post in Jacksonville. According to biographer Robert Timberg, McCain seduced his conquests on off-duty cross-country flights — even though adultery is a court-martial offense. He was also rumored to be romantically involved with a number of his subordinates.
In the spring of 1979, while conducting official business for the Navy, the still-married McCain encountered Cindy Lou Hensley, a willowy former cheerleader for USC. Mutually smitten, the two lied to each other about their ages. The 24-year-old Hensley became 27; the 42-year-old McCain became 38. For nearly a year the two carried on a cross-country romance while McCain was still living with Carol: Court documents filed with their divorce proceeding indicate that they “cohabitated as husband and wife” for the first nine months of the affair.
Although McCain stresses in his memoir that he married Cindy three months after divorcing Carol, he was still legally married to his first wife when he and Cindy were issued a marriage license from the state of Arizona. The divorce was finalized on April 2nd, 1980. McCain’s second marriage — rung in at the Arizona Biltmore with Gary Hart as a groomsman — was consummated only six weeks later, on May 17th. The union gave McCain access to great wealth: Cindy, whose father was the exclusive distributor for Budweiser in the Phoenix area, is now worth an estimated $100 million.
His relationship with second wife Cindy isn’t any more attractive.
Here’s a story, from the Rolling Stone piece, about a campaign nearly twenty years ago:
During his 1992 campaign, at the end of a long day, McCain’s wife, Cindy, mussed his receding hair and needled him playfully that he was “getting a little thin up there.” McCain reportedly blew his top, cutting his wife down with the kind of language that had gotten him hauled into court as a high schooler: “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” Even though the incident was witnessed by three reporters, the McCain campaign denies it took place.
Think he’s mellowed? Here’s a passage from Game Change, the new book on the 2008 presidential campaign:
“FUCK YOU! FUCK, FUCK, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!!”
McCain let out the stream of sharp epithets, both middle fingers raised and extended, barking in his wife’s face. He was angry; she had interrupted him. Cindy burst into tears, but, really, she should have been used to it by now.”
IV. He’s a crummy senator.
Arizona by most social metrics is a honorary member of the Deep South. It could use a little federal help to evolve its economy and try to join the modern world, the way other backward states do.
McCain, with his twisted view of how politics should work, hasn’t been a help.
Here’s Amy Silverman, New Times’ resident expert on McCain:
(McCain’s e)fforts to stop pork-barreling are sadly cosmetic, as well. First off, the earmarks that groups like Taxpayers for Common Sense rail against account for only 1 percent of the federal budget. One percent.
And it’s not all bridges to nowhere. McCain, who used to fight for projects like a regional airport for metropolitan Phoenix [. . .] now refuses to fund anything for the state. And his sheep, er, colleagues — Arizona congressmen John Shadegg and Jeff Flake — have followed suit. As a result, Arizona ranked dead last in earmark funding in the past fiscal year.
He’s not even good on foreign policy. Winning in Iraq would be “easy,” he said before the war. The U.S. would be greeted as liberators!
V. He’s a hypocrite and a sophist.
He fishes for votes amongst the worst most moralistic Americans, while he’s been a skirt-chaser his whole life. He abuses his wives and has cheated on at least one of them, yet he acts morally superior to gay men and women who tried to build their own lives together.
He will argue whatever side of any issue benefits him at the time.
Here he is recently on Meet the Press, talking about the “reconciliation” option on the recent health care bill:
SEN. McCAIN: I objected to that because I believed, as Robert Byrd does, that, that we should not be addressing these issues through 51 votes.
MR. GREGORY: But, Senator, you have voted for bills through reconciliation nine times since 1989.
SEN. McCAIN: Yes. Yes, I have voted for them, but I objected strenuously […]
I voted for them, but I objected strenuously!
McCain’s never shown any compassion for drug addicts. Tens of thousands of harmless drug offenders rot in the nation’s jails, costing taxpayers a fortune and creating untold further societal costs in ruined lives.
.. well, except for one drug addict: His wife Cindy, who got hooked on pills and stole them from her charity to feed her addiction.
There are people who have done a lot less sitting in Joe Arpaio’s Tent City-–or lying forgotten in other hell holes across the country. (A full Washington Post story on the affair is here.)
VI. He’s also intellectually dishonest, willing to contort himself into rhetorical knots to stick to his atavistic, hateful politics.
Here’s a good example.
Four years ago, when the military’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy was up for review, he said, “The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy,’ then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it.”
As you might have read, the leadership of the military did just that in recent weeks; the chairman of the joint chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, said “allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.” He was joined by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican—and a few weeks later, General David Petraeus said the policy should be reconsidered as well.
In response, McCain told the brass: “I’m extremely disappointed in your statement…. At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the ’don’t ask don’t tell’ policy. I’m happy to say we still have a Congress of the United States that would still have to pass a law to repeal ’don’t ask don’t tell.’”
A gentler man, one who’s psyche was consistent with the genial soul who warbled about “God’s children” n the debate over immigration reform, would use the general’s change of heart as a learning moment for his bigoted constituency. Instead, McCain, tacking right to fend off Hayworth’s primary challenge, is playing to their worst instincts.
And in a recent issue of Newsweek, McCain was asked about his maverick image. His reply:
“I never considered myself a maverick.”
VII. He’s a champion flip-flopper
Since McCain has had to contort himself philosophically each time he’s run for national office, he has a record as a flip-flopper the likes of which Washington has very rarely seen. Dickinson in Rolling Stone:
When challenged on The View, McCain again defied those who accuse him of flip-flopping. “What specific area have I quote ‘changed’?” he demanded. “Nobody can name it.”
In fact, his own statements show that he has been on both sides of a host of vital issues: the Bush tax cuts, the estate tax, waterboarding, hunting down terrorists in Pakistan, kicking Russia out of the G-8, a surge of troops into Afghanistan, the GI Bill, storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, teaching intelligent design, fully funding No Child Left Behind, offshore drilling, his own immigration policy and withdrawal timelines for Iraq.
VIII. He’s a creep.
Besides the way he treats the women he sleeps with, he’s a jerk to regular folks as well. Amy Silverman, in New Times, has the tale of what happened to Rose Mofford, who ascended to the governor’s office after the impeachment of Evan Mecham, when she went to DC to testify before McCain’s committee. It’s a complicated story, but basically Mofford, who’d been governor for all of eight days, got blindsided by some hostile questions from a senator been fed them by McCain.
Silverman, quoting a friend of McCain’s:
“During lunch, McCain said, almost with mischievous glee, that he had slipped some highly technical questions to [James McClure] to ask Mofford — questions she wouldn’t be prepared to answer or expected to answer.
“Flabbergasted, I asked McCain why would he want to sabotage Mofford’s testimony, when in fact the CAP was the nonpartisan pet of Republicans and Democrats — such as far-left Udall and far-right Goldwater — since its inception.
“His reply, as near as I remember, was, ’I’ll embarrass a Democrat any time I get the chance.’
These tendencies are lifelong ones. Rolling Stone:
McCain was not only a lousy student, he had his father’s taste for drink and a darkly misogynistic streak. The summer after his sophomore year, cruising with a friend near Arlington, McCain tried to pick up a pair of young women. When they laughed at him, he cursed them so vilely that he was hauled into court on a profanity charge.
McCain’s admittance to Annapolis was preordained by his bloodline. But martial discipline did not seem to have much of an impact on his character. By his own account, McCain was a lazy, incurious student; he squeaked by only by prevailing upon his buddies to help him cram for exams. He continued to get sauced and treat girls badly. Before meeting a girlfriend’s parents for the first time, McCain got so shitfaced that he literally crashed through the screen door when he showed up in his white midshipman’s uniform.”
IX. Even his military career has been overhyped.
McCain was shot down over Vietnam and spent years in a Vietnamese prison. He is routinely called a hero for this terrible ordeal. We’re not going to argue that, but it’s also true that his primary status was, like the hundreds of thousands of US serviceman at the time (not to mention millions of Vietnamese) not so much a hero as a victim—indeed, one grievously injured, abused, denied medical attention and left with lifelong physical impairments.
That said, as Tim Dickinson writes, McCain was a crummy serviceman. He crashed two planes while on active duty, and another near the end of his career. Since he was the son of an admiral, he was given a pass for this record, which would have permanently grounded a regular flyer.
Dickinson rounds up all the other tales about what a crappy sailor McCain was.
He repeatedly blew up in the face of his commanding officer. It was the kind of insubordination that would have gotten any other midshipman kicked out of Annapolis. But his classmates soon realized that McCain was untouchable. Midway though his final year, McCain faced expulsion, about to “bilge out” because of excessive demerits. After his mother intervened, however, the academy’s commandant stepped in. Calling McCain “spoiled” to his face, he nonetheless issued a reprieve, scaling back the demerits. McCain dodged expulsion a second time by convincing another midshipman to take the fall after McCain was caught with contraband.
As for his heroism as a POW, that too is a façade. McCain endured a great deal of cruelty and deserves our respect and compassion for that ordeal. But the “name, age and serial number” image isn’t true. Dickinson:
Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. “I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital,” he later admitted pleading with his captors. McCain now insists the offer was a bluff, designed to fool the enemy into giving him medical treatment. In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. “I had to tell them,” he insisted to Dramesi, “or I would have died in bed.”
Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain’s service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot’s behavior as heroic — “he wasn’t exceptional one way or the other” — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. “This business of my country before my life?” Dramesi says. “Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he’d be dead.”
X. Mr. Ethical only came into existence after Mr. Business as Usual got caught:
After he was sent to Washington, McCain and his family got in tight with Charles Keating, one of the poster kids in the savings and loan scandal.
Rolling Stone:
McCain and his family took at least nine free trips at Keating’s expense, and vacationed nearly every year at the mogul’s estate in the Bahamas. There they would spend the days yachting and snorkeling and attending extravagant parties in a world McCain referred to as “Charlie Keating’s Shangri-La.” Keating also invited Cindy McCain and her father to invest in a real estate venture for which he promised a 26 percent return on investment. They plunked down more than $350,000.
When the feds began closing in on Keating, McCain and four other senators went in to plead the goon’s case.
The senators who participated in the effort would come to be known as the Keating Five.
“Senate historians were unable to find any instance in U.S. history that was comparable, in terms of five U.S. senators meeting with a regulator on behalf of one institution,” says Bill Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, who attended the second meeting. “And it hasn’t happened since.”
In other words, Mr. Rectitude only got that way after nearly destroying his career by running around with a crook who, with some valuable clutch assists from McCain, cost U.S. taxpayers $3 billion.
Are there really only ten reasons to dump McCain? I’d love to hear your further nominations. And as always, corrections, criticisms and comments are welcome.
10:43 PM
A new poll: Hayworth closing in on McCain
The poll, by Rasmussen, puts Hayworth at 42 and McCain at 47, with a four percent margin of error. McCain has been leading in every poll taken thus far; it seems more likely that the error would be in McCain’s favor.
Here are the poll’s favorable/unfavorable rankings of Tweedlecreep, Tweedlebuffoon and Rodney Glassman, the likely Democratic opponent in November:
Favorable / Unfavorable
John McCain: 52 / 46
Rodney Glassman: 32 / 34
J.D. Hayworth: 43 / 49
Those are apparently the findings for likely voters; note that on the Pollster.com page for the poll, a commenter named “jmartin4s” says:
I looked at the internals of the primary poll and I think the McCain/Hayworth primary could go either way. According to the poll Hayworth has a 58% favorability among R primary voters and McCain has 57%. [This makes sense, given that all voters would have a higher favorable impression of McCain than Hayworth.] In addition, Hayworth represented a part of Maricopa county for a while and has gotten the endorsement of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The fact that McCain an a four-term incumbent is ahead of Hayworth by only 5 is amazing. In addition, the primary is in September [actually, it’s Aug. 25] so there is a huge amount of time for McCain to continue to bleed votes to Hayworth.
Emphases added.
Talking Point Memo’s piece on the poll contains this comment from one “david46”:
A couple of months ago, I had a long conversation with a long time Arizona Democratic political operative about what was gooing on in AZ. He said that McCain was in trouble and do not pay any attention to the disorganized and chaotic Hayworth campaign. The Hensley family (i.e., Cindy McCain) no longer had the dominent position it once had in the AZ Republican Party.
The party organization hates McCain and was looking to take him out because he was a liberal in their thinking and that he would not take care of their financial interests. (McCain was burned badly in the S&L scandals and pretty much stopped looking after individual, parachial financial interests and AZ is a state with heavy Federal involvement in its economy.) He said that the several very wealthy folks who control the AZ party wanted to get rid of McCain and replace him with someone who would do their bidding. They were prepared to let the seat go Democratic in the event the buffoon Hayworth lost in a general election because they would be able to talk to a Democrat about parochial AZ interests which they cannot with McCain and then hope to put in a Republican in six years.
Terry Goddard at this point looks good to win the Governor’s seat, but he does have a history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The Hispanic vote continues to grow. The problem is that there is not a first tier Democratic candidate for the Senate seat because Democrats such as Gifford thought it was too much of a long shot that Hayworth would defeat McCain—and they were probably correct. That said, the Dems do have respectable folks in the race and if Hayworth does win, then expect resources to pour into AZ.
The latest fundraising news
Mike Dan Nowicki in the Arizona Republic has this, which suggests that Hayworth isn’t going to have it easy:
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and his primary challenger J.D. Hayworth released their final fundraising numbers for the first three months of 2010. Hayworth, a former congressman who officially entered the race on Feb. 15, reported raising an impressive $1.07 million, though he only has $681,478 left on hand. McCain, however, collected $2.3 million and still has $4.6 million ready to spend.
(Apologies to Dan Nowicki for getting his name wrong originally in this post.)
7:17 PM
John McCain is still dodging Politico
The other day John McCain ran away from a Politico reporter who tried to ask him why the famously mavericky senator is now denying he ever was such a thing.
Currently in D.C., per this Politico piece, there’s apparently speculation that McCain may break with the GOP in its efforts to stop the Obama administration from reforming the financial industries.
There’s no real evidence in the story Mccain might actually do that, but in any case he’s still skulks away whenever he’s asked something:
Many lobbyists say they are watching Obama’s former presidential rival — perhaps the most unusual of the unusual suspects — because he’s engaged in a heated Arizona Republican primary with former Rep. J. D. Hayworth. Financial observers have concluded that McCain’s vote will depend entirely on his analysis of how it plays among Arizona primary voters.
“If McCain decides that doing this will help him beat J.D. Hayworth, he’ll do it,” says one.
McCain formed an unlikely alliance with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to propose reinstating the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banking from investment banking. That law was repealed in the late 1990s, and many critics say it allowed for the growth of mammoth and risky investment banks. Fully reinstating the law would be further than the Obama administration has proposed.
But for now, Wall Street can breathe easy. Asked if he or other Republicans might vote for the bill, McCain offered a terse “no” and stepped quickly into an elevator.
5:45 PM
John McCain, the self-hating maverick
The imploding senator get nailed by Politico in a Capitol hallway encounter:
When POLITICO asked McCain about the contradiction at the Capitol this week, the Arizona Republican grew visibly irritated and snapped: “I’ve been called a thousand things. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”
He said 48 percent of the homeowners in his state are underwater on their mortgages. He said he’s always “done what’s best for my state and the nation.” Then he said it again, adding, “People can consider me whatever they want.”
And then he darted into the Senate chamber without explaining himself further.
6:46 PM
Jon Stewart on John McCain: "The currency of his soul is utterly worthless"
The Daily Show rips into McCain:
8:15 AM
Glassman running for Senate
Rodney Glassman, a Democrat, is a Tucson city councilman. He is not well known statewide but may become the de facto challenger to either John McCain or J.D. Hayworth in November if better-known Dems like Bruce Babbit or Gabrielle Giffords don’t chance the race.
Glassman slammed McCain for not being responsive to requests for federal help for local projects and accused him of neglecting the state. McCain has a national reputation for fighting earmarks and pork spending.
“Where has he been the past 28 years?” Glassman said. “We have a U.S. senator who’s more interested in visiting Kabul than visiting Casa Grande.”
The Tucson Sentinel:
Glassman’s bid surprised virtually no one. He told TucsonSentinel.com: "I’ll be the first elected official in 20 years to take on John McCain for U.S. Senate. I’ll also be the first candidate endorsed by dozens and dozens of Democratic leaders throughout the state.”
While he’s had an official “exploratory committee” for months, Glassman put off a formal announcement until Tuesday. In February, he explained his delayed decision by saying he wanted to concentrate on helping the city navigate its budget difficulties.
A Daily Kos poll from last Friday showed clearly that J.D. Hayworth was a slightly more vulnerable figure in the general than McCain.
The poll had Bruce Babbitt tied with Hayworth and six points behind McCain. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was thirteen points behind Hayworth and twenty behind McCain.
In both cases, interestingly, Glassman’s showing was almost identical with Giffords’.
The headline on the Daily Kos poll was that Hayworth is currently running fifteen points behind McCain:
Despite the conventional wisdom that McCain could be vulnerable to an intra-party challenge, we find that McCain has a fairly solid level of favorability among Republicans. His current favorability among GOP voters stands at 76%, with only 19% expressing disapproval.
Hayworth, meanwhile, may well have some upside in the GOP primary, as he is still unknown to about a quarter of the electorate. And it is worth noting that among Republicans, he is well liked (a 61/16 favorability spread).
However, his upside might be limited to a GOP primary. In a general election, he is clearly a greater liability for the GOP. Hayworth is much less popular among both Democratic and Independent voters, and sports an net negative favorability (34/42) among all voters, joining only President Obama (41/55) and incumbent GOP Governor Jan Brewer (39/54) in minus territory.
Full report on the poll here.
7:46 AM
John McCain: Not so mavericky after all
In the new Newsweek, there’s a look at John McCain’s re-election campaign. In it, McCain runs away from himself as fast as he can:
“Maverick” is a mantle McCain no longer claims; in fact, he now denies he ever was one. “I never considered myself a maverick,” he told me. “I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.” Yet here was Palin, urging her fans four times in 15 minutes to send McCain the Maverick back to Washington.
Politico talked to J.D. Hayworth after the Newsweek article was published:
“If you’re scoring at home, how many reversals is this?” Hayworth added, running through what he sees as a litany of McCain position changes. “He’s moving away from legislative reversals into branding reversals. It’s the new John McCain, nonmaverick edition, for the Arizona Senate election.”
5:34 PM
Will Nan Stockholm Walden challenge McCain in November?
Says Politico:
As Sen. John McCain works to beat back a primary challenge from the right, Arizona businesswoman Nan Stockholm Walden is taking a look at entering the Senate race on the Democratic side, according to Democrats in Arizona and in Washington.
Walden, an executive at Farmers Investment Co. who served as a staffer for former Democratic Sens. Bill Bradley and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, could provide her party with a credible, well financed candidate in the event that McCain loses or is severely wounded in his nomination fight with former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, Democrats said.
“She could be quite formidable. She has a national network. She’s been very plugged in with women donors – particularly, I think, in Senate races,” one Arizona Democrat told POLITICO.
Full story here.
1:28 AM
Rachel Maddow kicks J.D. Hayworth's ass
The MSNBC host had Hayworth on yesterday evening. PHXated, who is rooting for Hayworth to knock that chucklehead John McCain out in August, was disappointed in his stalking horse’s performance.
Full video is below.
The conversation had two main parts. In the first, Maddow asked Hayworth about his well-established ties to the crook Jack Abramoff.
Hayworth let the conversation descend into a debate as to whether he was the first-, third- or ninth-largest recipient of Abramoff money.
In the second part, she asks him about his contention that the highest court in Massachusetts had “defined marriage as, simply, quote, the establishment of intimacy.”
Hayworth used this assertion to make the argument that legalizing gay marriage could allow people to marry horses.
Maddow read from the decision, demonstrating plainly that the court, “simply,” had done no such thing. Hayworth,looking like a not-very-bright tree sloth caught in a pair of car headlights, could say only, “You and I have a disagreement.”
More after the video:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The only solace Hayworth fans can take is that Hayworth is being crazy like a fox. He is, after all, running in the Arizona republican primary, looking for votes from a group of people for whom factual accuracy, logic, common decency, tolerance, and intellectual coherence are of relative and fungible interest. We’re hoping that Hayworth may yet demonstrate he is their man.
4:51 PM
J.D. zings McCain!
Finally, a little life in the candidacy of the man PHXated has its hopes on to knock John McCain out of the senate and then be a vulnerable GOP nominee in the general so the state has at least a chance to be represented from someone in the reality based community.
It’s an ad labeling John McCain a nominee for “Best Conservative Actor.”
Because, see, he only acts like a conservative. Get it?
McCain’s response, according to Dan Nowicki’s blog:
“Ex-Congressman J.D. Hayworth should immediately apologize and and take down his latest online ad, which is an outrageous offense to John McCain’s lifetime of honorable service to our state and nation, and insulting to Native Americans here in Arizona and across America," said Shiree Verdone, McCain’s campaign manager. "Mr. Hayworth is welcome to debate the challenges facing our state and nation, but this kind of character assassination has no place in the Republican Party, and Mr. Hayworth should ashamed of his campaign for running it.”
Now, if anything the ad would be insulting only to Pandorans, right? For McCain, though, the association would doubly sting, because Pandorans are the ultimate tree-huggers.
Anway, the ad also exposes how difficult it is to support the bozo-er of two bozos, running for the nominee of a group of backward as the Arizona Republican Party.
McCain’s problem isn’t that he’s a fake conservative. He’s a fake maverick, a fake moderate and a fake compromiser. The only reason he started departing from the GOP line was after he got caught in the Keating Five scandal, which is to say, after he got exposed as being a typical moralizing-on-the-outside, corrupt-on-the-inside Republican.
He went “mavericky” to distract attention from his crookedness.
New ad idea for J.D.: “For John Mccain, integrity is the real unobtanium!”
Nowicki also says that the Hayworth camp has fiddled with the ad to make it more Avataresque, here.
4:04 PM
J.D. Hayworth in the NYT
The anticipated challenger to John McCain’s Republican senatorial renomination this year gets a front-page profile ‘n’ pic in the paper of record today:
PHOENIX — J. D. Hayworth is a large man, and to compensate for his indulgences, he hits the elliptical trainer every morning at 4, zipping along to an incongruous soundtrack of Elvis Costello, Frank Sinatra and old advertising jingles.
The story, while noting McCain has support in the state, sums up his recently philosophical somersaults thusly:
Mr. McCain now finds himself jammed, moving starkly — and often awkwardly — to the right, apparently in an effort to gain favor among the same voters whom Mr. Hayworth, a consistent voice for the far right, could pull toward him like taffy come summer.
Mr. McCain now sharply criticizes the bailout bill he voted for, pivoted from his earlier position that the Guantánamo Bay detention facility should be closed, offered only a muted response to the Supreme Court’s decision undoing campaign finance laws and backed down from statements that gays in the military would be O.K. by him if the military brass were on board.
The story also notes that Hayworth himself is no prize:
Mr. Hayworth, a former sportscaster who rode the 1994 wave of conservatism into Congress, where he then served six terms, has political baggage. He was a very large recipient of both money and largess — like sports skyboxes — from the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. His loss to Harry E. Mitchell, a Democrat, in his 2006 re-election bid was humiliating, and underscored voter distaste for some of his more boisterous ways.
In interviews with roughly 20 Republican voters in Scottsdale and the conservative city of Gilbert, not a Hayworth supporter could be found.
6:54 PM
John McCain hits a new low
Facing a likely re-election challenge from J.D. Hayworth, John McCain — bad pilot, bad husband, bad senator, bad presidential candidate, and noted maverick-when-convenient — continues to struggle to regain some of his right-wing bona-fides.
WSJ story today on McCain’s problems here.
He’s already come out opposing the current push to end “don’t ask don’t tell” in the military. John Stewart last night dug up a clip that shows the strenuousness of the contortions the moves are putting McCain through.
Video clip at the end of this post. The clip from four years ago shows McCain deflecting an inquiry about his position on the matter then by saying, “The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy,’ then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it.”
Of course, at the historic hearing the other day, the leadership of the military came to the senate to tell them they should consider changing it.
McCain yesterday: “I’m extremely disappointed in your statement…. At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the ’don’t ask don’t tell’ policy. I’m happy to say we still have a Congress of the United States that would still have to pass a law to repeal ’don’t ask don’t tell.’”
(By the way, as we move toward the 2010 elections, I think it’s interesting how the Obama administration is deliberately highlighting issues like this. So even though there is evidence of an anti-Democratic momentum in the air, however knuckle-headed it might be, the media spent the last two days talking about historic moves by the Dems to right what most rational people think is a long-overdue wrong — and re-running clips of drawling good old boys opposing it for the usual laughable reasons. It looked to me like evidence the administration was going to be using some of these wedge issues against the right in the coming months.)
The Daily Show:
9:12 PM
The Giffords race
The Republic analyzes:
“Giffords will have to use all of her considerable campaign-trail talents to defend her votes for the stimulus package and the health-care and energy bills in a district that has a track record supporting ‘middle of the road’ candidates,” wrote analyst David Wasserman for the “Cook Political Report.”
Giffords, whose 8th Congressional District encompasses parts of Tucson and communities in Arizona’s southeastern corner, voted with the president 90 percent of the time last year, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan publication Congressional Quarterly.
Although Democratic Reps. Harry Mitchell and Ann Kirkpatrick also are considered vulnerable, they are less closely identified with Obama at a time when his priorities have been losing support in public-opinion polls and at the ballot box.
The paper notes at the end of the story that she has $1.6 million on hand.
4:20 PM
Phoenix is in the running for the 2010 GOP convention
The Republican National Committee said Monday that its short list for the 2012 convention includes Phoenix, Tampa and Salt Lake City.
Phoenix-area political and tourism leaders have been trying to attract either the GOP or Democratic national conventions downtown that summer. They are promoting the Metro light rail system as well as the region’s hotels and resorts and downtown venues including US Airways Center and the Phoenix Convention Center. Arizona is the home state of U.S. Sen. John McCain, who lost his 2008 presidential bid but won the state.
The potential fits in well with PHXated’s contention that the Democrats view Arizona as a key swing state in 2010. McCain did win the state in 2008, but with but 54 percent of the vote, a somewhat anemic showing for a favorite son and a moderate.
3:49 PM
J.D. Hayworth on 'Hardball'
Hayworth comes off like a genial lunatic under Matthews’ grilling, among other things still trying to make hay about Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
He says he’s he’s “99 and 44 one-hundredths percent certain” he’ll be on the ballot in the August Republican primary. In answer to Matthews’ direct question whether he’s running, Hayworth says, “Oh, yes, we’re moving forward.” Making a reference to Arizona’s awkward election law, he dissembles and then says, “Let me say we’re in the process of filing the documents.”
5:31 PM
J.D. Hayworth to be on 'Hardball' today
The conservative talk-show host has quit his show but not formally announced a challenge against John McCain. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has been promoting his appearance this afternoon, but it seems a stretch to think Hayworth would use the liberal network as an announcement platform.
Here’s Matthews’ segment on McCain from yesterday:
8:44 PM
John Shadegg retiring
Dan Nowicki reports in the AZ Republic:
“While representing the people of Arizona in the House was one of my goals in life, it is not the only one,” Shadegg said in a written statement. “After 16 years it is time for me to take my life in a new direction and to pursue my commitment to fight for freedom in a different venue.”
Shadegg and national Republicans immediately signaled that they believe they can continue to hold Shadegg’s 3rd Congressional District, which leans toward the GOP. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., carried the Phoenix-based district over President Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race.
McCain did carry it, by about 56.5 percent, about two and a half points better than Shadegg. The spread would seem to represent McCain’s Favorite Son vote. Shadegg’s opponent, Bob Lord, had some national Democratic money support, particularly late in the race, but he was palpably inexperienced and something less than a known quantity.
Assuming the Democrats can find a serious candidate, that and the ineluctable bluing of the state would seem to put at least another five percentage points into play, making the seat at the very least competitive. Arguing against it is the national mood, which bears some signs of trending against the Democrats, particularly since the last jobs figures weren’t an improvement.
Nowicki:
So far one Democrat, Jon Hulburd, had announced his intention to challenge Shadegg. A Democratic source tells AZ/DC that Hulburd raised $315,000 in the fourth quarter of 2009. News that Shadegg is not running no doubt will launch a feeding frenzy among possible Republican candidates.
Shadegg’s father, the late Stephen Shadegg, was a former Arizona Republican Party chairman and a longtime confidant and campaign strategist of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz.
Hulburd’s web site is here. Not much about him. The Swing State Project calls him a “lawyer, businessman, would-be-novelist, and former Gary Hart staffer.”
7:00 AM
The McCain push poll
A push poll is essentially a survey conducted by a pollster trying to get a fore-ordained conclusion. You do it by including disparaging information about one candidate in the questions. The process works for you in two ways: You can good poll numbers to crow about, and you’ve spread negative information about your opponent.
Last month, you’ll recall, a poll from Rasmussen, an established pollster, had John McCain and J.D. Hayworth running within a few points of each other in a potential matchup for the Republican senatorial primary next year.
The McCain organization, horrified at those numbers hanging over him, no doubt commissioned a more friendly poll, from a right-wing group called Tarrance, to combat it.
In the Republic the other day, Dan Nowicki did a story about it. Unsurprisingly, it showed McCain with a 20-point lede over a potential Hayworth challenge.
While Nowicki made it clear at the top it was a Republican poll, the hedline didn’t (in the print edition), and you had to read to the end of the article before you found out that the poll did smear Heyworth in the questions.
The pollster’s line is that McCain was winning before the questioners started disparaging Hayworth.
Still, I think the story should have led with the fact that it was a push poll. And Nowicki should have asked the pollster who specifically paid for it.
That said, he also didn’t report what to me was a big difference between the two polls. The Rasmussen one was a “robo poll” that questioned about 600 Arizonans via automated calling. The Tarrance one asked the same number by a live person over the phone. The latter is the superior process.
7:00 AM
The WSJ says Ann Kirkpatrick's seat is in danger
An overview in the Wall Street Journal today takes a look at Democratic House seats that might be in danger in the 2010 Congressional elections. While she’s not mentioned in the story, a pull-out graphic with the story prominently displays Ann Kirkpatrick’s northeast district, the Arizona first.
PHXated noted last week that the Cook Report and 538.com, using their own analysis, had Harry Mitchell, of the Arizona fifth, and Gabrielle Giffords, from the eighth, on their list of most vulnerable Dem districts.
Last week, Joe Biden was in town to raise money not for them but Kirkpatrick. And the EVT’s Le Templar noted as well that the district’s conservative nature means Kirkpatrick, too, may be vulnerable next year.
12:00 AM
How will Arizona's House delegation do in the 2010 elections?
(Update below.)
Over at 538.com, Tom Shaller has posted an overview of the most vulnerable Democratic House seats in 2010. The site doesn’t do on-the-ground political analysis so much as crunch numbers and assess macro factors like fund-raising.
In this case, Shaller took numbers on the races from the Cook Political Report and then added a few factors. In all, they included: The rep’s votes on health care and cap and trade; the traditional political nature of their districts; their most recent win margin; and the cash on hand they and their potential opponents have.
The bad news for Arizona Democrats is that two local House seats by these measures look vulnerable. Indeed, Harry Mitchell, of the Arizona fifth, is one of the nine most vulnerable across the country.
Gabrielle Giffords, from the eighth, is one of fifteen members on the next-most-vulnerable tier.
Their districts are superficially similar, with urban anchors in the affluent eastern parts of Phoenix and Tucson, respectively.
The Cook report is a very sophisticated operation (as 538.com is as well); I’d just make one observation that neither seems to have noted in the case of these two races; that the Arizona Republican vote in 2008 was skewed because of McCain’s favorite-son status.
McCain got less than 52 percent of the vote in Mitchell’s district, and just above 52 percent in Giffords’. It seems arguable that both would have gone at least slightly Democratic were anyone else running on the GOP side.
That said, the 2010 campaigns will be run in a much different political climate, and one without the energized folks who came out for Obama. Both parties are prepared for significant Democratic losses next year, and it’s possible two of them will come from Arizona.
For a GOP perspective on the race in the eighth, Greg Petterson points to the recent deposing of a longtime Democratic city council person in Tucson and offers this assessment:
When you are trying assess how Tuesday’s election will affect the 2010 race, remember that Tucson is the Democratic core of Gabby Gifford’s district. Yet, if the election were held today, Giffords would have to struggle to win an election in Tucson itself. Add back the Republican portions of the district and CD 8 is looking like solid Republican territory.
p.s. : As I noted above, the 538.com analysis wasn’t on-the-ground political prognosticating. It was all about crunching the numbers. Here’s the EVT’s Le Templar, who is on the ground, on an Arizona House race that didn’t get the blog’s attention:
The vice president is raising money today for one incumbent not included on that most-vulnerable list: Ann Kirkpatrick. The Congressional District 1 race is flying under the radar because Democrats have more registered voters and Kirkpatrick’s potential challengers haven’t raised much money, yet. But the district is quite conservative and Kirkpatrick won her first term in the fallout from former Rep. Rick Renzi’s criminal indictment for political corruption. There’s also this video where Kirkpatrick literally walked out of a meeting with her constituents. Expect that video to get a lot of air time and blogger references in the coming year.
My guess is Kirkpatrick will be at least as vulnerable as Mitchell and Giffords next year.
Arizona’s polity is obviously in a state of upheaval from top to bottom, and as it moved from red-state to swing-state status there will certainly be volatility. But speaking generally about the Democrats from the national perspective, it strikes me that what too often isn’t noticed is that bad times for the Democrats and the new president came conveniently early.
Just a year from the election the country seems to have hit bottom. The health-care debate and unemployment are still drags, of course. (And might turn out to be game-changers on their own if they are not resolved by next summer.)
Still, it’s an odd advantage, but an advantage nonetheless, that the party has a year to deal with the problems rather than a period of months or even weeks. That they might be resolved during that time is a possibility that is too-infrequently raised, I think.
7:29 PM
Joe Biden is in town today
Republic report here.
During a visit to Phoenix Monday morning, Vice President Joe Biden praised the federal stimulus for its early effects in Arizona and reminded state Democrats how well the economy has already responded.
“Only 12 states have gotten more money obligated than the state of Arizona has,” Biden said of the state’s $5 billion in federal aid.
Biden spoke to several dozen supporters at the downtown Wyndham Phoenix Hotel, where he attended a fundraiser for Democratic Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick and Harry Mitchell.
Emphasis added. Biden’s words are a reminder that Arizona, for all the states-rights bravado spouted by its Republican political representatives, is one of those states who get a lot more back from the U.S. Government than it puts it.
(Indeed, with the exception of Washington D.C., virtually all the whiny traditional “red states” benefit from taxes in this way. Details here—with an easy-to-comprehend map—and here.)
Le Templar, in the EVT, notes the political aims of the visit:
Vice President Joe Biden is in Arizona this morning, trying to build support for the White House economic stimulus efforts and attending a fundraiser for some Democrats in the state’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives. Biden’s visit coincides with a growing national consensus that Reps. Harry Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords could be especially at risk to a national shift in voter sentiment back to the Republican Party.
12:00 AM
Who voted how in the House on health care and the unemployment extension
Arizona’s congressional delegation voted on party lines on the big health-care bill in the House; less noticed was another important vote over the weekend, this one on extending unemployment benefits.
Dan Nowicki in the Republic noticed it:
Three Arizona Republicans on Thursday made up 25 percent of the House opposition to the bill to extend unemployment benefits to jobless Americans.
The House voted 403-12 to pass the legislation, which on Wednesday had won 98-0 Senate approval. Reps. Jeff Flake, Trent Franks and John Shadegg were among the 12 “no” votes.
The measure, signed Friday by President Barack Obama, would extend jobless benefits for 14 weeks across the nation and provide an additional six weeks of benefits on top of that for job-seekers in states where the unemployment rate is 8.5 percent or greater.
Emphasis added. Nowicki notes that the Democratic Party blasted Shadegg immediately after the vote—a sign that the party is targeting him next year.
As PHXated has argued before, how the Democrats view Arizona is going to be the most far-reaching political story in the state for the next three years.
If the economy takes another nose dive or even if it just remains stagnant, the Democrats will of course take a hit. But as Obama’s regular appearances here in the state testify, Arizona is on the party’s radar as a swing state in 2012. Even as a favorite son, McCain got only a bit above 53 percent of the vote last year, and the demographic shifts do not favor Republicans. The state could have eleven or twelve electoral votes after the 2010 census; a swing from red to blue would represent a big 22- or 24-vote swing for the Democrats.
Back to the unemployment vote: Note how by Republican logic, tax cuts help the economy by putting money back into the hands of people, but for some reason extending extending unemployment benefits—i.e., putting money into the hands of people—doesn’t.
A rebounding economy would take an arrow out of the GOP’s quiver; it could also make our local right-wing congresspeople vulnerable for not having helped the recovery along—and in this specific case, delivering a big “Screw you” as well to the people made most vulnerable by the downturn.
12:00 AM
538.com on John McCain's 2010 senate race
Nate Silver’s clear-thinking analysis of the possibility of party flips in next year’s senate races sees things as pretty balanced right now: Eight Republicans and seven Dems in the fifteen races most likely to see a party switch.
The possible re-election of Arizona’s senior senator comes far down on his list, number 23 out of 38 races. (There’s more than 33 or 34 because of vacancies.) Here’s what Silver says about the race; the down red arrow means the chance of a party flip has decreased in the past month:
23.
Arizona (R-McCain) — Finally some polling numbers out; PPP shows him with somewhat tepid approval numbers, but doesn’t show any of the potential Democratic candidates coming particularly close — certainly not close enough to get anyone like Gabby Giffords interested in a kamikaze mission. Still, McCain has been very quiet, and it might be wise to hedge some against the possibility of a last-minute retirement.
12:47 AM
Biden holds fundraiser for Gabrielle Giffords
At the event, in Delaware, Biden raises worries of a GOP re-takeover of the House of Representatives. This story, in Roll Call, details the supposed vulnerability of three Arizona Dems:
Democratic members of Congress hold 49 districts that McCain won in 2008, including three in Arizona. Giffords’ district and that of Rep. Harry Mitchell (D-Ariz.) gave McCain 52 percent of the vote; Rep. Anne Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.) won despite McCain taking 54 percent of the vote in her largely rural First District.
[…]
The fundraiser, held in Greenville, Del., will benefit Giffords’ bid for a third term. Giffords beat state Sen. Tim Bee® by a 55 percent to 43 percent margin in 2008, as both parties spent heavily on behalf of both candidates.
It doesn’t pay to argue with Roll Call on political matters, But I don’t think the argument applies quite so strongly to the Arizona delegation. McCain’s results here were outsized because of his favorite son status. And in the event, of the three only Mitchell got less than 55 percent of the vote.
Right now it’s entirely to the Democratic’s advantage to have hyperbolic worries like this come into play. It’s best to be in trouble—or look like you’re in trouble—14 months out. The party has an entire year for the impact of the presumed health care reform sink in and the economy to be on firmer ground.
The ruling party is always supposed to suffer in the first mid-year elections; the Democrats could take hits in the off-year New Jersey and Virginia governor races in November; and of course new troubles, like Afghanistan, may come to the fore and strain the administration’s ability to lay the blame on the mess on the previous administration. (Where it of course belongs.)
But given the ebb and flow of political difficulties I think the Democrats can only be happy what seems like a major ebb is happening this far out from the next round of elections.
6:00 AM
Can Ann Kirkpatrick be defeated in 2010?
Greg Patterson thinks so. His candidate is Rusty Bowers; his argument is that Kirkpatrick’s victory last year rested on new voters:
They’re young, idealistic Obama supporters who aren’t going to vote in 2010. Those voters aren’t coming back to the polls in a non-presidential year and they sure as heck aren’t coming back without Obama on the ticket. […] Forget about the percentage of the electorate who—like Bowers—are 4th or 5th generation LDS Arizonans. Focus on turnout. The extra 75,000 young idealistic voters who showed up to vote for Obama aren’t going to be there in 2010. In 2010, CD 1 is a Republican seat.
(Emphases added. I also deleted some rantings in the middle of that graf that detracted from his argument.)
Patterson may be right. I’d note three things. One is that the national Democratic party is going to remain focused on Arizona; it plainly smells blood here. The other, which explains the first, is that the three of the state’s eight congressional districts held by Republicans are all seeing their center of gravity pulled inward to Maricopa County, where demographic shifts, culturally and racially, long term are working against the GOP.
And finally, the elections are 14 months away. Anything can happen, of course, but a year from now it may seem plain that the economy, for one, had bottomed out ths summer. Obama has more than a year to show improvement in the lousy condition President Bush left the country, and the world, in.
6:00 AM