The recall election of Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce is just weeks away, November 8. In January, when Citizens for a Better Arizona announced their drive to collect signatures in District 18, an uber-conservative section of Mesa, few pundits gave them a chance of garnering enough names. Heck, Pearce had never lost a race in six campaigns, and now he's President of the Senate, often dubbed by the media as the most powerful man in Arizona.
Then, surprisingly, Citizens for a Better Arizona submitted far more signatures than were necessary to force an election. Gulp! It turns out a lot of Mormons, in particular, believe the Senator's bigoted policies are an embarrassment to the Church -- one LDS elder even calling him a "knuckle-dragging closet racist." Still, few observers gave Pearce's opponents a chance of defeating the powerful author of SB 1070. After all, he had Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Governor Jan Brewer in his corner, and both sent national email blasts begging for cash and urging voters to return Russ to the Senate. If he loses, their messages suggested, Arizona will be overrun by brown people.
But Pearce's mishandling of the recall campaign has more than a few formerly jaded reporters making a surprising prediction: Pearce will lose. His team's outlandish and unethical behavior during the campaign has even dominated the mainstream media, allowing voters to see more clearly what the man is: a thug. Controversy started with fake news stories about the recall process and the volunteers behind it. Then Pearce's flimsy attempts to halt the recall in court, all of which failed, made him look like the arrogant dickhead he is. Finally, all the Lincoln Logs tumbled down during the Olivia Cortes affair -- his team's stupid attempt to run a diversion candidate who, they believed, would siphon anti-Pearce votes away from the legitimate challenger, Jerry Lewis. Cortes pulled out of the race, but everyone knows her sham candidacy was arranged and funded by Pearce's goons.
One result is that Pearce's tenure as Senate President is receiving the media scrutiny it deserves, and finally TV and newspaper reporters aren't afraid to call him on his dishonest tactics and vicious policies. While the state wallows in an economic cesspool, created during the decade when Pearce was chair of both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, he's busy introducing Birther Bills, an Official Weapons bill, more draconian restrictions on abortion, a Tea Party license plate, and a heap of wildly racist immigration laws that even his GOP brethren could not support. Combine Pearce's dismal legislative track record with his unethical behavior during the recall campaign, and even previous supporters are defecting. Just yesterday Mesa City Councilman Dave Richins announced he was backing Lewis.
"The other thing that is disgusting me about this whole thing are the dirty campaign tactics," Richins said, referring to the evidently bogus campaign of Olivia Cortes that was mounted by Pearce supporters to siphon votes from Lewis. "It is absolutely disgusting," Richins said. "The people of Mesa have no taste for this kind of tactic, and neither do I." Arizona Republic
If you want even more evidence that everything Senator Pearce has been saying during the recall campaign is a sham, just look at the finance reports filed this week.
Over the past few months we've heard over and over from Pearce that Citizens for a Better Arizona (CBA) and other recall supporters are "outside extremists," or some such nonsense. Often the words "socialist," "agitator," and "open-border advocate" appear in his spittle-laced performances, and he rarely fails to drop a homophobic slur when describing his opponents. Pearce makes it sounds as if CBA is funded by George Soros, the ACLU, and unions. And La Raza, don't forget that.
The truth is, more than 90 percent of CBA's operating funds were sent in by individual Arizonans, and CBA accepted no corporate funding. The same can't be said of Pearce, who illegally used Tom Tancredo's "Team America" to seek contributions from the country's most far-right groups, like VDARE.
This week's finance reports confirm what we've known all along: Republican Jerry Lewis's campaign is a grassroots effort supported by small individual donations, while Russell Pearce is sucking corporate balls. Pearce doesn't have to file his final report until later this week, but here's what's on file already:
Jerry Lewis has raised $67,873.95, of which $67,759.00 was received from individuals (link to PDF report). That's all but $113 from citizens. Many of the donations are in the $25 to $100 range, with the largest being $424. I scanned the list of more than 400 donors, and it's safe to say more than 90% of them live in Mesa, while the remainder live in other nearby towns, like Phoenix. Only a handful of donations are from out of state, mostly California. Lewis did not accept a single donation from a corporation, business, or PAC, and he returned a contribution from Planned Parenthood.
So much for out-of-state extremists.
Russell Pearce has until Thursday to file his campaign finance report, but two groups who donated to "Patriots for Pearce" have already submitted their statements. The Home Builders Association of Arizona (PDF report) sent $5,520 to the campaign, while The American Federation for Children (PDF report) contributed $21,140. Two corporate groups sent in nearly half as much as Lewis's 400 individual donors. Thank you, Citizens United.
Since the 1960s at least, some citizens have tried to slow the Valley of the Sun's out-of-control sprawl, which has made it one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world. Phoenix alone is more than 500 square miles; add in the other municipalities and the blob is nearly three times that size. Today, even as tens of thousands of foreclosed homes sit empty in Phoenix, Glendale, Scottsdale, Mesa, and other cities, developers continue to push outward into the desert.
The builders are aided by politicians like Pearce, who never saw an environmental regulation they don't want to discard. The Senator and his flunkies also keep the builders' expenses low by passing on the costs of new roads, utilities, schools, and other necessary amenities to current residents. Since the post-WWII era, "grow grow grow" has been the Arizona theme song, so it's no surprise developers have long controlled state and local politics. Russell Pearce, like many GOP legislators, is beholding to the housing industry's donations, and he regularly returns the favor:
Pearce this past legislative session sponsored a successful measure to limit how much cities can charge developers for new public buildings and services. Arizona Republic
Last session he and the GOP majority supported another bill, HB 2534, which makes it easier for cities to annex those pesky deserts that keep home builders from sprawling out even farther. Sheesh, $5,520 seems a bargain.
If you check the website of the American Federation for Children, they look like a fine, upstanding educational organization -- lots of smiling faces and small tikes holding signs that say "Give our kids a chance!" How moving. The American Federation for Children, like Parents for Education, is also a group that regularly gives Senator Russell Pearce an "education" award, which he proudly mentions in press releases and displays on his website. Now, why would educational groups give an award to the one individual who's most responsible for gutting the state's K-12 funding, for eliminating hundreds of millions of dollars from community colleges and universities, for attacking our teachers' retirement system? Why would these groups give Pearce an award, much less $21,000, when the Arizona Education Association rates him a big fat zero?
Why? You guessed it, the American Federation for Children is really the "federation for vouchers and privatization." And Senator Russell Pearce is one of their staunchest political allies. Arizona has historically been out front in the school choice movement, with nearly 600 charter schools to date. AFC even says we're "a national leader in tailored, school choice programs." What we're not a leader in is quality education, ranking 45th in math and science, for example.
Meanwhile, public schools go begging and the universities are getting hammered. But Russell Pearce received a plaque and more than $21,000. November 8 can't come soon enough.