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.
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