Anyone who thought the campaign leading to the November 8 recall election of Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce was going be a civil debate of ideas hasn't been paying attention to this old twit's history. He's the swell fellow, after all, who slapped his wife around in the '80s, then in the 90s was canned as director of the state's Motor Vehicle Division for forging documents. His son was arrested in that same sting operation, a family affair.
Fear, intimidation, crime -- pretty much says it all.
In Arizona, that track record qualifies you to enter the legislature, which Pearce did in 2000. He brought with him a bucket-head full of Cleon Skousen's secularist-hating, John Birch-loving, crackpot patriarchal Mormonism (white men only, please). During the next decade Pearce would take a political journey from screwball supremacist groups, including flirtations with outright Nazis, to a more respectable brand of bigotry and homophobia, where you can pass laws and become, according to the media, the most powerful politician in the state. Today, former National Socialist pals wonder what happened to old Russ now that he's gone mainstream. Shit, they used to sit around on his porch and tell Mexican jokes.
Dirty Tricks 101
Bet on it, as the campaign gets underway Pearce's team won't be above using the tactics that have served the Senator's career: lies, fear-mongering, corruption, hypocrisy, revenge, manipulation, and name-calling. Hell, those qualities will define his campaign strategy ... that's how he's always operated.
You want LIES? This session, with Pearce sitting for the first time as Senate President, we saw him exploit a substitute teacher's bigoted and untruthful letter about unruly Hispanic students, serving up some red meat for his anti-immigrant legislation. Happily, most of his crazy-ass bills failed, even rejected by many Republicans. If you go too far for the GOP in Arizona, you've committed a crime against human decency. More LIES? We've often heard Pearce quote the lunatic statistics about the costs of immigration invented by FAIR, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls one of the nation's best-funded immigrant hate groups.
How about some good old-fashioned FEAR-MONGERING? In a way, Pearce's entire political history has been built on this scaffolding. The "open borders" dog whistle, for instance, is tuned precisely to the frequency listened to by blue hairs in Sun City: brown men are coming to get you! Governor Jan Brewer's national email message came right out and screamed that there's "no hope" for Arizona without Russell Pearce in the legislature. Oh gawd, be afraid! In his national message, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio all but said Arizona will be overrun from the South unless voters return his buddy to the Senate: "I need you to stand with me now during this vital moment in our battle to secure the border and oppose Amnesty for illegal immigrants." The recall drive never mentioned amnesty.
Throw in a dash of CORRUPTION: Christ, they started out breaking the fucking law! No shit. In more than one way! First, Tom Tancredo's group "Team America," which is even more cartoonish than the South Park version, sent out a national email blast begging for cash to support Russ's operations here, which is called the Committee To Oppose Recall of Russell Pearce. Big problem: Team America was not registered to do that for the Senator, which is a legal no-no. Tancredo got a letter from elections officials. The letter mentioned something else too. What's also a no-no in a major league way is soliciting corporate contributions says Arizona Election Director Amy Bjellard: "It is unlawful for corporations or labor unions to make expenditures that influence elections." And in recalls, corporate cash is absolutely verboten. Oops. Tancredo not only asked for corporate cash, he euphorically crowed to the rightwing moneybags that there's no friggin' limit!
"Because it is a recall effort corporate funds are welcome and contributions are unlimited!!"
Except there is a limit. It's called $0.
HYPOCRISY knows no limits either in PearceWorld. While Tancredo was sending his cash-begging email to every wingnut website and organization in the nation, including hate groups like VDARE, Pearce was whining to the media that Citizens for a Better Arizona, the group behind the recall, was funded and led by "outsiders." Funny thing, all of the directors of Tancredo's group live outside the state, which is even true of the supposedly local organization, the Committee To Oppose Recall of Russell Pearce.
Thursday, the "Committee To Oppose Recall of Russell Pearce" filed paperwork with the Arizona Secretary of State's Office, allowing it to raise money to save Pearce's hide. It's headquarters? Vienna, Virginia, 12 miles away from Washington, D.C.
Both its treasurer and its chairman are non-Arizonans: The latter is ex-Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, and the former is Angela "Bay" Buchanan, sister of wingnut Republican Pat Buchanan. New Times
In the other camp, both co-directors of Citizens for a Better Arizona live in the state, and more than 90 percent of the donations CBA received came from Arizonans. And if you talked with the volunteers pounding the pavement in Mesa to collect signatures -- teachers, seniors, students, church officials -- you didn't find many on George Soros's payroll.
Want to see a VENGEFUL prick? When Pearce didn't appreciate the immigration protests at the Capitol during the last legislative session, he declared the grounds off-limits to certain civil rights advocates, who he named, although he wouldn't call it a blacklist. Oh, yeah, Pearce didn't care for the public's presence either at the legislature's press conferences, so he just decreed that citizens are banned from them.
MANIPULATION? Heh, since the recall was announced, Pearce and his team have been pulling every trick they know out of their unethical backsides in order to stall, invalidate, or stop the November election. The local courts have quickly sent them packing, so now they're banking on an appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court. There's a reason Pearce's case is decided so soon. The arguments wouldn't hold a pint of pee.
Where do we even begin with NAME-CALLING? Open any Pearce publication, listen to him speak, or visit his website if you dare, and you've struck a Pavlovian goldmine of words and phrases that get the Tea Party's hate glands all excited: extremist, open border, leftwing anarchists, liberal, radical, socialist -- all of it linked to that amnesty-loving President, who happens to be black (and may be a citizen, we don't know). Joseph McCarthy could've learned a thing or two from Pearce and his fence-loving friends, like former Congressman JD Hayworth, who called recall volunteers "the very same socialist thugs who carry swastikas and call ALL conservatives 'Hitler.'" I know, there are at least three levels of rational dumbfuckery going on there, but logic and introspection were never Pavlov's strong suit. It was a bell and red meat -- the Pearce plan.
Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign
So it comes as no surprise that we're already seeing dirty tricks from the Committee To Oppose Recall of Russell Pearce. Most of the tactics mentioned above come together in a new Pearce campaign sign that's popping up in Mesa, a sign so blatantly false and deceptive that Citizens for a Better Arizona is threatening a lawsuit. Interestingly, except for the tiny-font funding credit, the sign does not even mention Russell Pearce or his main opponent.
That man would be Jerry Lewis, who is Pearce's nightmare candidate -- a charter school official, leader in the Mormon church, and 30-year resident of District 18. I don't know if they like him in France, but he's conservative, no doubt about it. Still, he doesn't come off like a vicious dickhead, so the Democratic Party and most others who'd like to see Pearce take a long vacation are staying out of the race and supporting the Republican Lewis. Last week a popular Mesa minister, Tommy Cattey, even dropped out and threw his support behind Lewis, saying he hoped to return "humanity" to the Senate.
As soon as Jerry Lewis's name emerged, even before he filed to run, things started to get nasty, and I don't mean people started burning their Nutty Professor videos. Someone threw a padlock at Lewis when he was out jogging immediately after his name appeared in the media. For the last three weeks, before Twitter finally shut it down, some goonball in Pearce's camp was sending out frequent Tweets under the name of Jerry Lewis. The account, which included Lewis's campaign photo, sent messages that made Lewis sound like a gay-friendly, open-border socialist: "Laws R 2 harsh on illegals, need to make them feel welcome." I read those fake Tweets and thought he sounded like a pretty cool guy, but I don't live or vote in Mesa, and there probably aren't too many there who responded as I did.
The Twitter account was up and running before Jerry Lewis filed his paperwork last week, as were the campaign signs put up by Pearce's team. Even before they knew Lewis would officially be their main opponent, consultants had designed and placed the signs, which read:
Randy Parraz and his Recall Candidates:
• Oppose the Rule of Law
• Support Open Borders
• Supported by Labor Unions who Boycotted Arizona
__________________
New Times has a photo of the sign here.
The sign features a big picture of Randy Parraz, and at the bottom in smaller type you'll discover that Parraz is "a liberal extremist," a "community organizer" (wink, wink), and he "supports gay marriage." The only thing missing is his love tryst with Ché Guevara.
You'd think Pearce is running against Parraz, which, in a way, he is. Jerry Lewis's name or photo do not appear anywhere on the sign. Pearce's supporters know the Senator can't effectively smear the squeaky-clean Mormon Republican, so they're campaigning against Citizens for a Better Arizona and its one co-director, Randy Parraz. Notice the sign does not mention the other CBA co-director, Chad Snow, who, inconveniently for Pearce, does not have a Hispanic name. "Chad Snow" sounds like a kid on "Leave It To Beaver."
So expect Pearce to run against an "outside extremist" organization run by Hispanics, not Jerry Lewis. Parraz and CBA are none too happy about the way they are depicted on Pearce's sign. Chad Snow, who is a lawyer, sent a letter to the Pearce campaign demanding that the signs be removed or a lawsuit may be forthcoming.
"There are baldfaced lies on those signs," Parraz told The Mesa Republic. "Everyone has the right to freedom of speech, but they don't have the right to lies."
Parraz said his father was a deputy sheriff for 13 years, so allegations that he opposes "the rule of law" are absurd. He also said he does not favor open borders and did not support calls to boycott Arizona in the wake of Pearce's Senate Bill 1070, a tough immigration measure that is now being challenged in the courts.
Parraz acknowledged that he does support gay marriage ... but that has not been an issue in the recall campaign. Arizona Republic
It's obviously not true either that Jerry Lewis opposes the rule of law or is an open-border advocate. He's nearly as far-right as Pearce, recently saying for instance that SB 1070 was "a good start" toward solving the problems at the border.
As much as Pearce, Brewer, Arpaio, and other headless bodies yammer about "illegals" and would like the campaign to be only about immigrant hate-baiting and fear-mongering, the Senator was not recalled primarily for authoring the "papers please" law. The recall group's website and materials did not even mention SB 1070. No, the 18,000 people in District 18 who signed the petition did so because Russell Pearce has been an ineffective and offensive Senate President, whose vindictive and counterproductive policies are undermining education, healthcare, the economy, and Arizona's social fabric, which has always been multicultural. For more than a few Mormons, he's also an embarrassing fool -- a "knuckle-dragging closet racist," as one church elder put it.
If you want to know who really "opposes the rule of law," look no further than the doofus sitting in Russell Pearce's chair. Recalls are provided for in the Arizona Constitution, and Citizens for a Better Arizona worked with the Secretary of State's Office to do everything by the book. More than 18,000 signatures where collected and submitted, when slightly more than 7,700 were needed, and the State verified more than 10,000 of them. The recall supporters worked within the "rule of law" thing that gives Pearce such a hard-on, but now he and his toadies are trying to subvert the very same democratic process he claims to worship -- often dressed in his flag shirt.
UPDATE: Stephen Lemons at New Times has details about a Thursday fundraiser in Phoenix to benefit the recall group. You can also donate here. Thanks!