Russell Pearce's clown car is breaking down
Shortly after Arizona Senator Russell Pearce's historic recall last November, he began planning his political comeback: first there was a hate-radio gig on the
Ban Amnesty Now show, where he could continue spewing his noxious bull; then he
was elected vice chair of the Arizona Republican Party (yeah, voters might've rejected Pearce overwhelmingly but the GOP leadership remains bonkers). In March, Russell Pearce, author and chief defender of SB 1070,
announced he would seek the senate again, in the newly drawn District 25 in Mesa.
That announcement was probably the last good day Pearce has had. About the same time, multi-millionaire Bob Worsley entered the GOP primary—a successful businessman who created SkyMall, those airplane magazines that sell all kinds of cool shit you seldom need. Soon, nearly every Mesa city council member, and the mayor, endorsed Worsley. Like many in the state, they're tired of Pearce's diarrhetic mouth hole, and would prefer he just crawl back under his rock.
Then in May Pearce's neo-nazi pal J.T. Ready killed five people, including a baby and himself, and the old Pearce-Ready photographs and stories resurfaced in the local media, reminding voters of the former senator's supremacist and vigilante ties. With immigration and border crime down considerably, the Pearce-Ready fearmongering about Mexicans didn't seem as dangerous as the camouflaged bigots themselves.
A month later a very conservative US Supreme Court tossed all but one of the provisions of Pearce's baby, SB 1070—gutting his main "accomplishment" and leaving Gov. Jan Brewer looking like a, natch, idiot. At the same time President Obama ordered the administration to stop deporting most young undocumented immigrants, a move many Americans supported. Polls reflected a new immigration reality, including support for the DREAM Act and commonsense reform. Just two years ago Sen. John McCain walked along the border with Sheriff Paul Babeu, ranting "build the dang fence"; Gov. Jan Brewer was blathering about headless bodies; and Senate President Russell Pearce, often referred to as the most powerful official in Arizona, could only utter a noun, a verb, and "invasion." That's gone.
The shitstorm overtaking Pearce's campaign is reflected in the two candidates' most recent financial reports. During the recall election last year Pearce raised buckets of outside money from anti-immigration groups, helped by fellow traveler Tom Tancredo. This time, Pearce has only raised $2,800 to Worsley's $67,000. To add insult to you-suckery, two Phoenix restaurants and a school denied Pearce's request to hold fundraisers at their sites.
And then this week...
The ACLU is currently arguing before Judge Susan Bolton that the provision of SB 1070 that the Supreme Court left standing last month should be blocked as well. To bolster their argument that the "papers please" law is based on racial prejudice, not security, the ACLU filed a public records request for Senator Pearce's emails from 2006 to 2011—the time that he, ALEC, and other tools were drawing up SB 1070. The emails, which were plastered across news sites this week, will do a good job of cementing Pearce's reputation at Stormfront, but that's about it. Here's just one:
Can we maintain our social fabric as a nation with Spanish fighting English for dominance ... It's like importing leper colonies and hope we don't catch leprosy. It's like importing thousands of Islamic jihadists and hope they adapt to the American Dream.
Pearce began the week on the front pages, calling Mexicans lepers and jihadists. His usual protest, "I'm not a racist," rang sorta hollow. Then the Aurora shooting occurred and Pearce couldn't keep his big ugly trap shut and let the victims and nation grieve. His Friday Facebook post, which blamed namby-pamby theatergoers for the massacre, played in the local papers and TV news shows. The Sunday Arizona Republic printed his mindless response in its entirety, typos and all. A passage:
Had someone been prepared and armed they could have stopped this "bad" man from most of this tragedy. He was two and three feet away from folks, I understand he had to stop and reload. Where were the men of flight 93???? Someone should have stopped this man. Someone could have stopped this man. Lives were lost because of a bad man, not because he had a weapon, but because noone was prepared to stop it. Had they been prepared to save their lives or lives of others, lives would have been saved.
That's right, men of flight 93, you should've tackled that guy in body armor spraying bullets in your face. That's from a tough-talkin', wife-slappin' Vietnam-era vet who spent his entire National Guard stint in Arizona. STFU you fatheaded fool. In a Facebook post today, Pearce took out the shovel and dug deeper,
saying
All I did was lament that so many people should be left disarmed and vulnerable by anti-gun rules... The madman had guns, but even those with the training to handle a firearm could not stop him because they had been disarmed... In Arizona we have passed laws to free our people so that they can defend themselves.
That's right, and in Arizona, Pearce's gun paradise, where there's no limit on the number of AK-47s you can buy per day, the state
ranks #2 in gun slayings. How's that freedom to defend yourself working, Russ?
The proverbial hammer clobbered the proverbial nail today when Arizona's junior senator, Jon Kyl, endorsed Bob Worsley.
He's exactly the type of candidate Arizona needs. I have no doubt he will focus on the issues that matter most to Arizonans to help move our state forward. Arizona Republic
Brahm Resnik notes in his story that the endorsement is significant because Sen. Kyl has generally remained out of state primary politics. That he would choose
this election, the one featuring a nationally-known disgraced racist blowhard, says a lot, none of it good news for Russell Pearce.