I considered a preface of 'only in Arizona,' but honestly, I know better.
After authoring Arizona's 'papers please' law and other assorted anti-immigrant garbage, it seems even enough Republicans have gotten sick of the Russell Pearce that he just might lose his state senate seat. And the recall campaign, on Pearce's side, has been real classy so far. So a piece of news came out today that seems worth mentioning. On Monday, the chairman of a group supporting Pearce boldly denounced slander. How things have changed by the weekend.
So here's Matt Tolman, chairman of Citizens Who Oppose the Pearce Recall: I dub thee C-WOPR, it has a nice ring to it. On Monday, he was busy denying that the Pearce campaign would put up a fake Twitter account of his opponent, Jerry Lewis, to slander him.
"I wouldn't condone slandering someone," Tolman said. "I would condone getting information out as far as Jerry's positions."
Regarding the Twitter account, Tolman said, "I wouldn't want that done to me."
I saw the fake Twittage last week; apparently it vanished last weekend. The fake account went about its merry business trying to tie Jerry Lewis to all manner of left-wing ideas and people, so as to make the candidate less palatable to the folks in Russell Pearce's district. It's already been made clear that Lewis is no liberal moonbat, as Mother Mags has kept up on the story for awhile now. It's a conservative district, and it's going to elect a conservative -- just not Russell Pearce, hopefully.
So C-WOPR is all about bringing the facts out, no slander there. Let's be clear about what Tolman said on Monday. Because it didn't take long for that to change. Here's today's news from the Arizona Republic. C-WOPR has begun posting signs around. Just the facts, right?
The signs were posted this week by Citizens Who Oppose the Pearce Recall.
They say organizer Randy Parraz and any candidate who might oppose Pearce in the Nov. 8 election "oppose the rule of law, support open borders (and are) supported by labor unions who boycotted Arizona."
Parraz said those statements are false. Lawyer Chad Snow, another recall organizer, sent a letter to Pearce and to Matt Tolman, chairman of the committee that posted the signs, demanding their removal.
Also in the article, Tolman admits that the signs were developed before anyone even knew who was going to run against Russell Pearce in the recall election. How he could possibly spin this as just getting information out is baffling. His excuse?
When asked how candidates could be attacked before their identity was known, Tolman said, "It goes back to our belief that the recall is wrong. It's being used for intimidation purposes only. . . . I'm just opposed to the recall in any way, shape or form."
Interesting how recall elections become good or bad based on which end of it you're on, eh? Not that I saw Democrats in Wisconsin complaining much about the recalls staged against Democrats there; no, they just worked hard and beat the attempts to recall them. But this recall against Pearce, that's wrong. Somehow. Even though there is no law in Arizona stipulating why a recall is to take place. This time it's against a Republican. That makes it bad.