Today at 5PM is the deadline for opponents of Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce to file the necessary 621 signatures with the Secretary of State in order to appear on the November 8 recall ballot in Mesa's District 18. So far Republican Jerry Lewis has submitted the required number of signatures, while two other candidates, Libertarian Michael Kielsky and newcomer Olivia Cortes, have declared their intention to challenge Pearce. [UPDATE: Kielsky withdrew right before today's deadline, and will back Lewis. Cortes sent a surrogate, a Tea Party chairman, to drop off her signatures.]
Given Mesa's extremely conservative bent, the Democratic Party has remained out of the race, since the more names on the ballot the more likely it is challengers will split the anti-Pearce vote, and the old lout will walk away with the highest tally, which is all that's needed to win. Most Pearce loathers have stepped aside and are supporting Jerry Lewis, a Republican with a business and education background. Lewis, a leader in the Mormon church and a 30-year resident of District 18, is clearly Pearce's nightmare candidate -- someone he can't tar as an "outside extremist."
When Olivia Cortes filed her intent to run, more than a few people questioned her candidacy, since she has no political experience, refuses to talk with the public or the media, has no staff or funding, and did not release any campaign materials. The one thing she has going for her is a Hispanic name, which might attract a fair number of anti-Pearce voters who know nothing about Cortes.
Today, stories in both the Arizona Republic and New Times support the view that Cortes is little more than a plant, a smarmy tactic to dilute the anti-Pearce vote. We should not be surprised, because since the recall drive was announced in January, Russell Pearce and his toadies have stopped at nothing to squelch or steal the November election. Let's take a brief tour:
When Citizens for a Better Arizona, the group that initiated the recall drive, announced their intent to collect enough signatures in conservative District 18 to force an election, Senator Pearce originally pooh-poohed their activism. The author of SB 1070 and a shitload of other anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-education, and anti-healthcare bills claimed that the voters love him. Hell, he's never lost an election in District 18!
However, it soon became apparent that even in Pearce's very Republican district many people despised his bigoted policies, including many conservative Mormons who are embarrassed by the Senator's mean-spirited and intolerant record. That "record," in fact, is the last thing Pearce wants to run on. Not only has he given Arizona's reputation a humongous black eye, but since he assumed a leadership position the state has crumbled in nearly every manner possible: economically, educationally, socially. This past legislative session, dozens of Arizona CEOs (not exactly a progressive group) even sent Pearce a letter asking him to quit being such a vile doofus. The letter helped, as enough Republican Senators abandoned Pearce when he introduced some of his most despicable measures last spring, and his bills failed.
Citizens for a Better Arizona built their campaign around Pearce's dismal record, not on SB 1070; in fact, you won't see the law mentioned in their materials. Within weeks of announcing the recall drive, CBA collected thousands of signatures, and before the deadline they submitted more than 18,000 names to the Secretary of State, when slightly more than 7,700 were necessary to force a recall election. The Secretary of State's Office verified more than 10,000 signatures, requiring Governor Brewer to set an election date, which she did for November 8. Since then we've seen nothing but dirty tricks from the dickheads running Pearce's campaign.
Discredit CBA
Rather than run on his piss-poor record, Pearce began by attempting to discredit Citizens for a Better Arizona. The group's two co-directors, Chad Snow and Randy Parraz, both live in the state, yet Pearce and his lackeys blasted them as "outside extremists!" CBA pointed out that most of their pavement-pounding volunteers were from Mesa -- teachers, seniors, students, many of them Republicans. (Check the video on the CBA homepage and you'll see some of these scary extremists!) Parraz also noted that more than 90 percent of their donations came from Arizonans, at the same time Pearce was working with rightwing groups like Tom Tancredo's "Team America" to beg for cash nationwide (illegally as it turns out). Talk about "outside extremists" -- through "Team America" Pearce hooked up with hate groups like VDARE to help fund his recall campaign.
Lawsuits
Then they attempted to invalidate the recall's success in the courts. Surely there can't be 10,000 people in District 18 who hate Russell Pearce! Surely there must be some devious plot at work to trick people to sign the petitions! That's actually the argument Pearce's legal team filed, first in Appellate Court. In effect, they argued that petition signers didn't know their signature might trigger a recall election -- even though every page had "Recall Pearce" stamped across the top. They also argued that a single invalid signature should nullify the entire page of names. Judge Hegyi quickly dismissed the outrageous appeal and Pearce's team then shifted to the Arizona Supreme Court, where the case remains. Given that Citizens for a Better Arizona worked with the Secretary of State's Office to design the forms and recall process, Pearce is in the unenviable position of arguing that the SoS doesn't know its job. The Supremes said they will rule soon on the matter without oral arguments, which isn't good news for Pearce.
Media
In addition to pursing legal recourse, Pearce's goon squad took to the media to convince voters that the recall isn't legit. The rightwing website Sonoran News published an article that alleged a "massive voter registration fraud," even though the two cases cited turned out to be wrong (two out of 18,000!). One woman with a Hispanic named was even smeared as "likely an illegal," when in fact she is an Arizona resident and U.S. citizen. Setting aside the truth and common decency, winger websites picked up the story nationally. Here the Maricopa County GOP and Arizona Republican Party reproduced the article verbatim on their websites. To date, I haven't read an apology, retraction, or correction.
The Pearce team even took to the Twitter machine. Someone set up an account in the name of Pearce's strongest challenger, Jerry Lewis, which featured his campaign photo. Before Twitter took the account down, for several weeks the fake Lewis issued regular statements that made him sound like a gay-friend, immigrant-loving progressive, such as: "Mormon, support Randy Parraz, gay marriage, pro-abortion advocate, union & community organizer. Laws R 2 harsh on illegals, need 2 make them feel welcome."
Then there's the matter of Pearce's political signs, which didn't say a word about the Senator's qualifications, nor did they mention his opponent Lewis. Instead, the signs stated boldly that anyone who votes against Pearce is an "open border" freak who doesn't subscribe to the "rule of law." In small letters there's even Pearce's patented homophobic slur. Instead of a picture of Pearce or Lewis, the signs featured a large photo of Randy Parraz, co-director of CBA, who happens to have a Hispanic name. Not only did the signs blatantly lie about Parraz's record, but they were illegal on a number of counts: they were put up too early, their locations were not approved, and they did not include contact information. The City of Mesa forced Pearce to take them down.
Strong Arm
Pearce also called upon friends to convince the public that Arizona will swill down the toilet unless Russell Pearce is returned to the legislature. First Governor Jan Brewer, who owes her political hide to the Senator's SB 1070, issued a national hair-on-fire email blast stating that there will be "no hope" for Arizona unless Russell wins. Next, Pearce's partner in Mexican bashing and former boss Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio sent his own email nationally (Pearce was Arpaio's deputy for more than 20 years). The Sheriff essentially said Arizona will be overrun by brown people from the south unless Pearce is in the legislature protecting us.
Faux Candidates
Then we come to Olivia Cortes, whose fake candidacy was pretty much outed in today's two news stories. Both reporters visited Mesa to talk with paid signature gatherers for Cortes. Gary Nelson at the Arizona Republic described his encounter:
On Thursday, a woman who said she was being paid to circulate Cortes' petitions, stopped a Republic reporter leaving the library. The reporter mentioned rumors that Cortes had entered the race to split the vote.
"Right," the woman said. "Not away from Pearce. To Pearce."
Reporter: "So she's actually hoping that Pearce will win the recall?"
Circulator: "Right." Arizona Republic
Next, Stephen Lemons at New Times, probably the only reporter who has succeeded at getting Cortes to say anything on the record, described his discussion with the signature gatherers:
When Suzanne asked if I lived in LD 18, I fibbed and said I did. She then asked if I was a Russell Pearce supporter. So I told an even bigger fib, and said yes.
"Then you want to sign this," Suzanne told me. "The whole purpose of getting her on the ballot is to dilute the vote so that [Pearce] stays in."
She's not running on her own behalf, I asked incredulously?
"She's running on her own," the woman said. "But the whole purpose is to split the vote. So that everyone who [is] against [Pearce] will vote for two people instead of one, and that way [Pearce] will get the most votes." New Times
There's a lot more to both stories, which are worth the read, especially Lemons' article. If anything, the stories show just how bold-faced the Pearce camp is, not even trying to hide their tactics. Pearce's supporters say "it's just politics" and "everyone does it," but I don't see Jerry Lewis's campaign running fake Nazi candidates to dilute the crazy vote. I also don't hear Lewis calling Pearce the kind of crackpot names the Senator levels at his opponents.
We should expect nothing less from a thug who slapped around his wife, was fired from one state job for forgery, openly hung out with white supremacists, has a swastika-tatooed son sitting in jail (after more than 30 run-ins with the law), created his own blacklist to keep protesters out of legislative chambers, barred the public from his press conferences, and constantly resorts to McCarthyistic name-calling, fear-mongering, and dirty tricks instead of campaigning on the issues or his record.
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