Rand Paul surprised some observers by trouncing Trey Grayson in the Kentucky Republican Senate primary 59-35 percent. He got a pass from most interviewers, who lobbed softballs that allowed him to spew his pollution unchallenged, and I’m sure many voters who gravitated to Paul’s “small government” populism did not think through the implications of his extremism. But when he appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show after the victory, and the public got a dose of the virus that infests his family philosophy, well, let’s just say Dr. Paul was right when he later said it probably was not a wise decision to go on her show.
I hope Arizona Senator Russell Pearce will visit Rachel soon. And, Senator, bring a friend or two. Allow me to suggest a few names. What got me thinking about this is that today’s Arizona Republic has a front-page feature on Pearce. And while it is thorough and generally balanced, I’d like to mention a few things that don’t get much attention there – some stuff to talk about with Rachel.
Anyone who watches even a teensy bit of politics in the Southwest has known about State Senator Russell Pearce for a decade or more, but it’s only been in the month since Arizona passed its “papers please” bill (SB 1070) that the rest of the country has gotten a whiff of the manure he’s been spreading across the Grand Canyon State. Pearce has been blowing his nativist dog whistle long before SB 1070 made a blip on the state’s political landscape. Not to be outdone, he’s had a lot of company at the legislature, people giving Pearce a run for Scariest Legislator of the Year, people like Senator Sylvia Allen, who achieved nutball fame recently for saying the earth is 6,000 years old. But Russell Pearce sits at the pinnacle, chair of the most important committee, Appropriations, and perhaps the next Senate President, or even a Congressman. The Senator's notoriety among human rights and other progressive communities, as most readers here know, stems from him being the loudest political voice behind Arizona’s 21st-century witch hunt. So let’s jump down that rabbit hole.
Joined at the Hip
One reason Russell Pearce and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio come off like the Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum of Arizona politics is that for more than 20 years (1970-93) Pearce was a police officer with the Sheriff’s department, where he eventually became Deputy Officer, Arpaio’s right-hand man. On his personal website Senator Pearce highlights the programs and policies he created for the county, including the infamous Tent City, where he also was responsible for “the removal of PG-13 and R rated movies from the county jail.” I guess few inmates are over 13.
The mirror of his pal Joe Arpaio, Pearce walks tall like Buford Pusser, a tough-talking hombre who’s always bragging up “the nation of laws” – a playground bully who likes to shove people around. That comes through in the divorce affidavit (PDF) his wife filed in 1980:
“Further, the husband, RUSSELL KEITH PEARCE, is possessed of a violent temper, and has from time to time hit and shoved the wife, the last time being on February 3 [1980], when he grabbed the wife by the throat and threw her down.”
[Diarist: Pearce and his wife reconciled and remain married today. She later said Pearce never hit her. Her attorney, who filed the complaint, says otherwise. Now a judge, he told a reporter: “I would have never made an allegation in a petition that the client was unaware of.”]
That seems to be a pattern with Pearce: pick on the most defenseless among us. However, when he was called on to fight men who could fight back, he found a way not to. Like Arpaio, who avoided the Korean War by serving as an Army typist in France, Pearce dodged Vietnam by joining the National Guard and then serving all of his time in Arizona (1965-72). Tough gig. I won’t criticize anyone who joined the NG or Reserves, fled to Canada, or sought a school or family deferment to avoid that stupid war. But it is astonishing how many of these chickenhawks (i.e., Cheney) often end up being mean-spirited, bellicose blowhards. On one of his re-election websites Arpaio complains that he really wanted to go fight commies in Korea but, darn, he was just too good a typist, so they sent him to France. Maybe because they never saw combat, they feel the need to recreate a version of it later in life – but only where they always get to be the hero. And Pearce played the hero … often. During his years of service to the public, he earned quite a few honors as a lawman, but consider the source of the recognition: Joe Arpaio.
Given Arizona’s wackadoodle politics, it’s no surprise the Republican Party eventually tapped Pearce as an upcoming “leader” among the far right. The story in today’s Arizona Republic traces some of his political training:
But during the 1970s and 1980s, Pearce gravitated toward a right-wing political guru whose teachings served to cement Pearce's beliefs in law and order and make him even more immovable when it came to defending those beliefs. W. Cleon Skousen, a former FBI agent, fervent anti-Communist and Mormon political theorist, lectured to large East Valley audiences in the 1980s and early 1990s, and Pearce attended some of those meetings...
Skousen, who died in 2006 at age 92, saw America not just in political but also in religious terms. He believed the Founding Fathers were inspired by God when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, revolted from British rule and framed the Constitution. This is, in every literal sense, God's country, he believed. Therefore, there could be no compromise in defending her laws, her values, her position among nations – and her borders...
Skousen believed in an obscure prophecy attributed to Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith that held that in the final days of the world, the Constitution would be hanging by a thread and would only be rescued by “the elders of Israel” - Mormon men. While the prophesy is considered outside the mainstream of the church, it resonates in Pearce's comments.
“I love this country. I love this republic,” Pearce said. “I believe it was inspired by God by our Founders to put together the freedom-loving constitutional republic that we have, recognizing certain God-given rights.”
With that message ringing in his ears, during the 1980s and 1990s Pearce served as a local and state delegate to Republican conventions, and shortly after leaving the Sheriff’s Office in 1993, he was appointed to several state jobs, ending up as Director of the Motor Vehicle Division in 1995. It probably didn’t hurt that his brother Lester was serving in the state legislature at the time, where he was chair or vice-chair of several powerful committees.
While Pearce’s personal website touts his accomplishments at the MVD, after less than four years on the job he was fired in 1999 for tampering with state files. It seems record forging at MVD was in the family genes because Pearce’s son, Justin, who also worked at his dad’s agency, was arrested in an FBI sting for issuing fake licenses and IDs (he pled guilty in 2000). In Pearce’s case, he falsified a woman’s driving record, erasing one of her DUIs, and Arizona Department of Transportation Director Mary Peters, a prominent Republican who later served as George Bush’s Secretary of Transportation, canned him. The only reason he does not have a criminal blotch on his record is that Peters chose not to prosecute. Pearce later said he was “cleared” of wrongdoing, but Mary Peters told the Arizona Republic: “There’s a big difference between being cleared and choosing not to file criminal charges” (Aug 21, 1999).
With References Like These: Next Stop The Legislature!
Out of a job and with a fishy record, Pearce turned to the obvious place: state government. He won his first race for the House in 2000; then, because of term limits, he switched to the Senate in 2008. He represents District 18, which is mostly central Mesa, one of those districts where the Republican usually wins. Although only 6% of Arizona’s population is LDS, they have long influenced if not dominated state politics, and Mesa is one of the sect’s power bases. The second largest Mormon Temple outside Salt Lake City stands in Mesa, a handsome structure built in 1927. Say what you want about the religion, Mormons often vote in a block when one of their brethren is on the ballot, and when you combine their conservative vote with Goldwater Republicans and far right loonies, you end up with Evan Mecham. Or Russell Pearce.
As a very conservative Mormon (one of 13 children) in a very conservative Mormon legislative district, Pearce has never had any serious Democratic competition. He also had acquaintances who could help, like Lee Watkins, the once politically connected owner of Cactus Towing who’s been the Senator’s friend for more than 20 years. Watkins hired Pearce’s son Justin in 2000 after his felony conviction, and at the same time he became one of the largest donors to Pearce’s first legislative campaign. Funny how those things work.
Senator Pearce would not forget his friend. In 2005, he was involved in a scheme to steer government contracts to Cactus Towing. According to an investigative series by the East Valley Tribune, he introduced legislation that mandated a bidding process that would benefit his friend’s company, even though Cactus Towing was not the low bidder for the lucrative contract. When his bill stalled in the legislature, Pearce wrote a letter to the Department of Public Service, pressuring them to adopt his system. Cactus Towing also recruited former State Representative and Congressman Matt Salmon to lobby on their behalf. With friends like these, they got the contract, which led to the investigation documented in the Tribune article.
Today, Pearce chairs the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, which means every state agency must wind its way through his fiefdom. Whether you run a school or university, social service program, prison, state park or museum, transportation agency, police force, library, or any other state agency or department, you eventually have to justify your program and budget to Pearce’s committee. If effect, he is one of the most influential politicians in the state. Smoke on that for a second.
2004: The Tipping Point
Scan Russell Pearce’s voting record at Project Vote Smart or any similar website, and you’ll notice that, in addition to the anti-immigrant drum that he beats constantly, he likes every bill that restricts a woman’s right to choose; he always supports legislation that allows guns in bars and restaurants; he votes for every marriage law that uses the phrase “one man and one woman”; he supports provisions that complicate adoptions by gay and lesbian couples; he rarely votes for any bill that calls for tougher pollution controls; and he’s tried numerous times to abolish Affirmative Action policies in state government. You get the picture.
But his positions on these issues – abortion, GLBT, guns – are shared by other elected officials; it’s Pearce’s relentless yammering about immigration that has marked his political career. You can’t listen to him for five minutes without hearing “illegal aliens.” No matter what the problem, he’ll make Mexicans the cause. To steal from Jon Stewart, Russell Pearce has immigration Tourette's.
One event that seems to have colored Pearce’s agenda was the assault on his son, Sean, a policeman himself who was shot in 2004 by an immigrant. We have friends whose adult son was shot and killed, so I have a tiny inkling of what a tragedy that must be for a parent. And while Sean Pearce thankfully recovered, I mention it to point out that while Pearce’s public history is filled with anti-immigrant speechifying, everything ramped up exponentially after 2004 when, as the Economist wrote, it all became “personal”:
Russell Pearce is the quintessential Arizona Republican. He wears stars-and-stripes shirts and has clips of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan on his website. He loves guns, his family, his Mormon faith, his country and the law, which he enforced for many years as deputy sheriff of Maricopa County. He jokes that being Republican, and thus not having a heart, saved his life when he got shot in the chest once. But his main passion is illegal immigrants, whom he calls “invaders”. He loathed them even before his son Sean, also a sheriff’s deputy, got shot by one. But now it is personal.
It’s a story and tactic he and others use over and over: Every time an immigrant is involved in a crime, plaster it all over the news, conduct a neighborhood sweep, keep beating the fear drum, even if you don’t know the act was committed by an immigrant (such as the shooting of rancher Robert Krentz on the border). Use the crime to call for tougher immigration policies; use it to void the Constitution; but propose no real solutions other than walls and arrests. Senator Pearce and the other obstacles to genuine immigration reform have been at the game a long time, and while he used to be laughed at for being too fringy, those who don’t want to live in the scary world he is creating are not laughing now. Carolyn Allen, a retiring Republican Senator who served in the legislature for 16 years, told the Arizona Republic her reason for leaving:
“I do not want to live in the police state that Russell Pearce, Joe Arpaio and Andrew Thomas are spearheading.”
That’s not the ACLU director, it’s a respected Republican legislator. The police state Senator Allen fears began taking shape in 2004 with Proposition 200, and its passage by voters buoyed Pearce for more and crazier policies. Despite opposition from prominent voices, including much of the business sector, Prop 200 passed with 56 percent of the vote. Ostensibly a measure to stop voter and welfare fraud, the proposition was known as the “Protect Arizona Now” bill. (Most of Pearce’s bills have jingoistic names: SB 1070 is officially “The Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act.”) In addition to asserting state sovereignty, which is always part of Pearce’s sagebrush toolkit, Proposition 200 introduced Arizonans to a number of other strategies he would use later:
- The law makes it a crime for state employees not to report undocumented immigrants seeking benefits. “[Immigrants] can’t come to America and get free stuff. It’s just wrong. You’ve got to take their benefits away,” Pearce said. Making everyone an immigration cop is part of the Senator’s strategy – a world Joe McCarthy would love, where everyone spies on everyone else. In this case he enlists state workers in his crusade.
- Proposition 200 requires proof of ID to vote, which sounds pointless because undocumented immigrants can’t vote anyway. But it’s an easy step, low-hanging fruit, a drip, drip, drip toward the far right’s dream of IDs, licenses, documentation, and “papers” for everyone. And what logically follows, which we have already seen with SB 1070, is the authority to demand papers anytime. For those who think the ends justify the means here, that immigration is a problem that warrants the suspension of rights, just wait till Pearce and other religious zealots start pecking away at your favorite provisions of the Constitution.
- Most controversial, Prop 200 mandates that all businesses verify the citizenship of their workers. Here he goes again, turning everyone into an immigration enforcer – this time it’s employers. You can imagine why the business sector did not support this provision. They complained about the paperwork burden and argued that IDs are easily forged; and, they said, most small businesses do not have the money or training to be immigration detectives. The main reason the chamber of commerce and similar groups opposed it, of course, is that much of the service sector, in particular, depends on cheap laborers.
One effect of Proposition 200 is that about 100,000 immigrants have left the state, but I haven’t heard that the act has really affected employment practices much (my cousin works in construction in Arizona and says little has changed). In the years since it was enacted, I don’t think a single business has been prosecuted for hiring illegals. Heck, Pearce should relax because it doesn’t look like there are any more immigrants here!
One true result of the measure’s passage, however, was that it spurred on Senator Pearce and other wingers. Keeping his finger on the fear button, and with Joe Arpaio giving him loads of media cover, Pearce soon introduced Proposition 103, the English Only bill, and Proposition 300, which denies all public benefits, including tuition and scholarships, to people without papers. Both passed. For several years now the state has been swirling in an economic toilet, much of it caused by the gasbags at the legislature, and the GOP’s #1 priority is to stamp out Spanish and block aid to needy children. Because, you know, that’s what’s really screwing up Arizona. JFC.
Riding this wave of success, Pearce twice backed legislation similar to SB 1070, and these bills did in fact make it out of the legislature. The only thing stopping HB 2807 in 2008, for instance, was that Governor Janet Napolitano vetoed the “papers please” legislation. However, with Janet now in D.C. and her chair occupied by Republican Jan Brewer, there have been few if any curbs on the crazies at the legislature. Not surprisingly, ever since Obama appointed Napolitano to head Homeland Security, Arizona has seen an epidemic of nutbaggery that Brewer has mostly egged on. As she vies for the Republican primary this fall, she’s moved further to the right, trolling, like John McCain in his battle with Foghorn Leghorn, for the considerable teabaggy vote, standing shoulder to shoulder with Russell Pearce. Remember, she is the same person who, as Secretary of State, removed thousands of Hispanic names from the voter rolls. According to Greg Palast:
Brewer, then Secretary of State, had organized a racially loaded purge of the voter rolls that would have made Katherine Harris blush. Beginning after the 2004 election, under Brewer's command, no less than 100,000 voters, overwhelmingly Hispanics, were blocked from registering to vote. In 2005, the first year of the Great Brown-Out, one in three Phoenix residents found their registration applications rejected.
The rightwing in Arizona can read the demographics, they see the tsunami coming, and they know their only immediate hope is to keep Hispanics from the polls. Within a decade, however, their tactics will not matter – when today’s elderly, who are mostly white, give way to today’s youth, who are mostly brown.
With A Little Help From My Friends
MinistryOfTruth has mentioned Pearce’s relationship with J.T. Ready and the state’s National Socialist Movement. If you don’t know this gang, just think brownshirts, swastikas, guns, and lots of “heil” stuff. Ready is a former Republican district committeeman, who lost his race for the Mesa City Council in 2006 (whew!). His views are so odious that in 2008 Arizona Congressmen Jeff Flake, Trent Franks, and John Shadegg, among the most conservative Republicans in Congress, called for his ouster from the GOP.
Today J.T. Ready is a local leader of NSA and an acquaintance of Russell Pearce, something the Senator initially denied when photos emerged of them hobnobbing at a supremacist rally. Ready is the same man who passed out fliers on May 5 declaring Cinco de Mayo “Report An Illegal Day.” Last weekend at the huge immigration rally in Phoenix, Ready and his thugs showed up with guns strapped to their ample waists, taunting marchers. The organizers publicized the rally as a family event, and for the most part it was, with thousands of families and lots of young people. Ready and his friends did not contribute to the family atmosphere. In this exchange with Channel 3 reporter Jim Carr, he says Hitler was “a great white civil rights leader.” When a Native American, whose people were “citizens” here thousands of years before Ready’s ancestors, challenged him on this very issue, Ready told the man to take off his clothes and dance around. Classy friends there, Russell.
Because of the scrutiny Pearce’s relationship with Neo-Nazis has brought him, he has since scrubbed his Facebook page of any reference to J.T. Ready and says the goon is not welcome in his home, which as of today was news to Ready. But take a gander at the first minute or two of this video of an anti-immigration rally at the State Capitol in 2009. That’s Ready at the podium, calling Pearce one of the few “statesmen” in Arizona politics as the flag-shirted Senator looks on approvingly.
Yes, he is the “statesman” who, in 2006, spoke glowingly about the 1950’s “Operation Wetback” program, a federal policy to round up and deport a million Mexicans. It was also about this time that Senator Pearce forwarded an email from another Aryan gang, the National Alliance, to hundreds of his supporters. Titled “Who Rules America,” the email condemned multiculturalism, arguing that whites and blacks should not mix, the Jewish media promotes racial equality, and, an oldie but goodie, the Holocaust should not be taught as fact. The email also linked to the National Alliance (I won’t). Pearce apologized when the incident was brought to light, but you have to question the commonsense and morals of anyone, especially a state legislator, who would read and then forward such trash.
The Feathered Bastard at New Times (aka Stephen Lemons) first reported on this email. He’s been covering Pearce and Joe Arpaio for years, which has brought his paper the wrath of Arpaio – lawsuits, late-night arrests of the publisher and editor, even the attempted seizure of the paper’s online database, including the email ID of every person who visited their website. Hello, Mr. Orwell. Without New Time’s investigations it’s likely many people would not know about the Senator’s history or his connections to extremists, because the mainstream media certainly didn’t report any of it early on. Finally, though, given Pearce’s raised profile since SB 1070 was signed, even the traditional news is looking into his past comments and associations. The more light the better.
In an NPR interview explaining his sponsorship of SB 1070, Pearce said, “I will not back off until we solve the problem of this illegal invasion. Invaders, that’s what they are. Invaders on the American sovereignty and it can’t be tolerated.” This “invasion” trope fills his rhetoric, although, as the lead singer of the band Radiorain pointed out:
“It is safe to say that in all the war movies I have seen and in the history classes I am taking, I have never read about or seen a country attacked by poor people fleeing their homeland to find a better life for their family. Usually, they have guns and tanks.”
[Radiorain is one of several bands contributing to the Line in the Sand CD that will raise funds to challenge SB 1070.]
Still, Pearce and others keep repeating the image, and it’s in this context of an “invasion” that most of his bills and policies are crafted. Of course, he doesn’t imagine invasions by corporations, bankers, developers, or idiotic politicians – the dorks most responsible for Arizona’s economic death spiral. No, in Pearce’s world, it’s the poor brown people from the south who’ve caused the state’s fiscal nightmare and most of the crime. There is crime in Arizona, and immigration is part of the mix, but most of the rightwing’s solutions are aimed at rounding up people who are washing cars, flipping burgers, and mowing lawns. And, in the process, tearing families apart:
Teach Your Children
Kids like that little girl are merely fodder in the war on immigration, so it’s no surprise many of Senator Pearce’s laws are aimed at education. With those impressionable young minds, I guess that’s the best place to teach intolerance. Like his successful Proposition 300, which denies scholarships or other financial aid to paperless students, most of his provisions do one thing: restrict the voices and opportunities of non-white students. Here’s a sampling:
SB 1097: Who’s in Class?
This year Pearce sponsored SB 1097 (PDF), which the legislature is currently debating. In his 1984 world, everyone watches everyone else, everyone is on the front lines of the immigration battle – this time it’s teachers and school administrators. SB 1097 seeks to quantify the costs of undocumented immigrants to the state’s education system. If it passes, the measure declares that all public school districts will identify students who are in the classroom illegally, and then the Department of Education is required to calculate the total costs and issue an annual report to the legislature. The Superintendent of Education is authorized to withhold funds from any district that does not comply. In effect, it’s another way to single out, stigmatize, and blame brown children for Arizona’s budget woes; more importantly, it implants the idea that discrimination is justifiable throughout the entire education system. Silly us, thinking we might educate kids out of poverty – kids who might later be a contributor to, rather than a drain on, the social network.
SB 1108: Don’t Hang with Your Homies
If you happen to teach Mexican American History (which is kinda hard not to do in a region that was part of Mexico until 1853), then you’d better check your syllabus. This bill (PDF), which was recently signed by Governor Brewer (it will go into effect in July), will likely prohibit or at least change ethnic studies in all public schools. Heaven help us if we read books that give Hispanic or Asian students a positive feeling about their culture! Introduced by Pearce in 2008, and encouraged by education czar Tom Horne, who is trying to out-crazy other Republicans in the Attorney General primary, the bill outlaws any course that: 1) “promotes resentment toward a race or class of people,” 2) is “designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group,” and 3) “advocates ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.” In response to critics, especially from districts where the vast majority of students are Hispanic, Republican Senator John Kavanagh, another xenophobe, said to the Arizona Republic, “You’re here. Adopt American values … If you want a different culture, then fine, go back to that culture.”
Okay, John, let’s start with Native American culture, which defined this region for more than 10,000 years before you wandered in. I imagine Pearce and his classroom spies would say many Native American novels, poems, and nonfiction accounts do indeed “promote resentment” toward the dominant culture – you know, the culture that murdered tens of millions of indigenous people. There’s no way around it: the genocide this continent experienced is a thread that weaves its way through some of the finest Indian literature, and while instructors might say they teach the stories “in context” and it’s not their aim to “promote resentment” or “advocate ethnic solidarity,” I can easily imagine Pearce arguing the opposite and ridding schools of these voices. Presumably, it’s okay to teach Irish American literature, even Joyce’s stories that promote resentment toward England.
And there’s another goodie tucked into SB 1108. Not content to outlaw multicultural views in K-12, the Senator added language that prohibits students in Arizona colleges and universities from forming groups based on race. Pearce said he didn’t want students “indoctrinated with seditious or anti-American teachings.” It’ll be interesting to see how this works out. Apparently the bill could outlaw, for example, ASU’s African Students Association or Students Across Borders, a Latino umbrella group at the University of Arizona. I imagine the Latter Day Saints Student Association at ASU is okay. Some groups are more equal than others.
14th Amendment: Constitution Follies
Keeping up his attack on children, more recently Pearce has joined Rand Paul to call for a reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment. In emails obtained by the local CBS affiliate (which are worth reading in their entirety), Pearce wrote:
“I also intend to push for an Arizona bill that would refuse to accept or issue a birth certificate that recognizes citizenship to those born to illegal aliens, unless one parent is a citizen.”
There’s only one problem with that: the first and, presumably, most important section of the Amendment:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws …
I’m no lawyer, but “All persons” and “No state” seem fairly unambiguous. Pearce, though, says the Amendment has been misinterpreted, and that the only reason it was enacted was to bring freed slaves into the citizenship fold. Okay, so why has it remained on the books more than 150 years after slavery was abolished? Pearce found nothing objectionable about, and in fact agreed with, an email written by someone else which said,
“If we are going to have an effect on the anchor baby racket, we need to target the mother. Call it sexist, but that’s the way nature made it. Men don’t drop anchor babies, illegal alien mothers do.”
That “anchor baby” phrase shows up in a lot of the right’s propaganda these days, including the Senator’s speeches – just another assault on constitutional rights, scapegoating the poorest voices with little representation, an easy target. The rabbit hole leads to a slippery slope.
Civil Rights Amendment 2010
Yes, they call it that, the Civil Rights Amendment. In 2008, Pearce backed Proposition 104, which banned the use of Affirmative Action in state and city government, including schools. Even in batshit crazy Arizona the proposition failed because the sponsors did not gather enough signatures. So Pearce and others are back this year with another public vote to amend the state constitution – an amendment that will outlaw Affirmative Action, trumping federal policy. The vote is scheduled for November.
Mr. Pearce Goes to Washington (!?)
So, if you think SB 1070 is the only Russell Pearce story in town … many Arizonans concerned about human rights (and the state’s economy) only wish it were so. They’ve seen him support other crackpot legislation, of course, such as HB 2631 (PDF), which essentially says Americans can only marry other Americans; the birther bill that requires a birth certificate for anyone on Arizona’s presidential ballot; and another law that fines landlords who rent to immigrants. But all of the bills sing the same tune: keep non-whites out of here or at least render them powerless. Because God says so.
If that weren’t enough, a report surfaced this week saying the economic forecast for the state is bad, and now much, much worse because of the tourism boycotts, the lost revenues from the many cities that have ceased doing business with Arizona, and the overnight disappearance of immigrant businesses and taxes (yes, they do pay taxes, about $2.4 billion in 2007). It’s not like the state was spitting diamonds in the desert before this economic tailspin happened. That’s some expensive bigotry you got there, Mr. Pearce.
Things could get a lot worse if Russell Pearce is elected President of the Senate next term and Jan Brewer wins the race for Governor – both of which are highly probable. It’s unlikely the legislature will ever turn blue in my lifetime, but Arizona does have a history of electing Democratic governors to balance the lunacy (Sam Goddard, Bruce Babbitt, Janet Napolitano), so let’s hope Arizonans work to put Terry Goddard in office this November. Otherwise, there will be no veto pen hovering over the hateful bills that are certain to land on the next Governor’s desk. And I really don’t want to see Senator Pearce gain momentum for a Congressional bid (it’s rumored he’ll take on Jeff Flake). You don’t want that either.
In the meantime, Russell Pearce, please go on The Rachel Maddow Show. And bring J.T. Ready. I hope the two of you can have a lively conversation with Rachel about the history and laws of this nation. Many of us are anxious for more people to hear your vision for America.