Sometimes, hiring a lobbyist as your chief of staff can come off as a desperate attempt to pay off your financiers. But here in Arizona, its just business as usual.
The 2010 governor's race with Jan Brewer playing her best Pinocchio to HighGround Inc.'s President Chuck Coughlin as Giappetto seemed like a low point for this state. I mean, why would people vote for such a brazen display of bought and sold politics? But I digress.
A much more disturbing trend seems to be that lobbyists are not content with simply pulling the strings of elected politicians here; rather, they'd like to run the place without the expense of a puppet and strings.
What am I talking about?
Well, the past few weeks have seen the official kickoff of the Phoenix Mayoral election. The current mayor, Phil Gordon (D) is term limited, meaning this election is a true open seat. Phoenix hasn't been reliably Democratic, but has managed to be bluer than the rest of Maricopa County when it comes to city government.
And now to the point: One of the candidates whose signs have come to litter the sides of the roadway along my commute home has been Wes Gullett. Today, I decided to find out just who he was.
It turns out, Wes Gullett is not just any Arizona Republican. He was an elector for John McCain in 2008, and has been involved in McCain's campaigns and operations for the past two decades. He was the chief of staff for convicted felon Fife Symington. And most recently, he was a partner in Chuck Coughlin's lobbying firm, HighGround, Inc.
While Gullett might come off sounding like a "reasonable" conservative, we all know what the election of Chuck Coughlin (via Jan Brewer) has given us. Arizona's politicians are being bought off by lobbyists left and right. ALEC legislation is being introduced word for word. And the election of Gullett, if turned to reality, will only open the flood gates of corporate plundering of our public treasuries further. Because if there's anyone that you can believe when they say:
City politicians and their staff should not be picking private sector winners and losers
Is a lobbyist who just got elected as Mayor of the nation's 6th largest city.