Citizens in Mesa's very conservative District 18 elected Russell Pearce six straight times. He was virtually untouchable, and when the nation pivoted to the right in 2010, Arizona went over the edge. Voters elected "Headless Bodies" Jan Brewer as governor, they gave her a veto-proof House and Senate, wingnuts Tom Horne and Ken Bennett were elected Attorney General and Secretary of State, and then legislators installed Russell Pearce, chief architect of SB 1070, as President of the Senate. Talk about a mandate!
The media dubbed Pearce "the most powerful politician in Arizona." That was one year ago. Tonight Russell Pearce can't say he's never lost an election.
Jerry Lewis, a political neophyte who was outspent greatly in the historic recall of Senate President Russell Pearce, sailed to victory tonight as the vast majority of votes have been counted in the west Mesa special election. Arizona Capitol Times
Pearce just conceded too! YEA!!!!!!!!!! MM does a little jig.
Why did voters turn so quickly? It didn't take long for the honeymoon between Pearce and the public to sour, after he tried to install himself as co-leader of the police state he and Sheriff Joe Arpaio were building.
Pearce drew up a blacklist that prohibited human rights advocates from entering the legislative chambers. He banned the public from the Senate's press conferences. He seemed not to give a damn when his policies, including SB 1070, pushed Arizona's economy into the shitter, saying it's a "myth" that the state's image was damaged! He ignored the public's will and went after education and healthcare with a vengeance, even kicking 100 people off a life-saving organ transplant list. He said they would "die anyway." Eh. At the same time they were gutting schools and healthcare, Pearce and the other GOP greed-heads passed huge corporate tax breaks.
Believing he had a mandate to push through even more drastic immigration dumbfuckery, Pearce introduce five extremely racist bills last session. They were so radical that 70 Arizona CEOs sent the Senator a letter asking him to quit acting like such a douchebag, because the cloud of bigotry he cast over the entire state was hurting tourism and business in general. In March the foundation of hate cracked completely when the GOP-dominated, veto-proof Senate rejected all of Pearce's immigration bills. Uh oh.
The worm had started to turn, but it appears Pearce didn't learn anything. He brought the same level of arrogance to the recall campaign. But when the media shined a light on his deceptive tactics, and voters saw the real Russell Pearce, they sent him packing.
When Citizens for a Better Arizona (CBA) kicked off their signature drive in January, Pearce bragged that he'd never lost an election in District 18. When it was clear, however, that CBA would collect far more signatures than they needed, Pearce suddenly wasn't so confident. He grew desperate, like a beady-eyed rat trapped in a corner, lashing out with his usual lies, deceptions, shams, and fear-mongering. The Pearce team:
• spread bogus media stories saying the recall was corrupt;
• took out fake Twitter and Facebook accounts in the name of his Republican challenger Jerry Lewis to make Lewis sound like a liberal;
• placed campaign signs around Mesa that dishonestly portrayed the recall organizers as open-border activists;
• lied about the costs of immigration, and ranted nonstop that strict anti-Mexican measures are needed to keep immigrants from taking over Arizona, even as studies showed immigration is down 40 percent;
• tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the recall in court using sham arguments;
• said the recall was funded by "outside extremists," when 70% of challenger Lewis's donations came from District 18, while nearly 90% of contributions to Pearce were from out of the District and Arizona;
• recruited and funded a sham candidate, Olivia Cortes, whose Hispanic name, the Senator's toadies believed, would siphon anti-Pearce votes from Lewis;
• and just two days before the election, the goons robocalled Democratic and Hispanic households in District 18, urging them to protest the lack of a Democrat on the ballot by writing in their own candidate, thus stealing progressive votes from Lewis!
The problem for Senator Pearce was that many of these deceptive tactics, especially the Olivia Cortes ploy, were picked up by the mainstream media. Rather than a half-year debate about immigration and other GOP red-meat topics, which is what the Senator wanted, the campaign's main story was Pearce's devious, lying tactics. And tonight we see the results!
The ALEC tool who authored SB 1070 and countless other racist bills; the peckerhead who slapped his wife around and then voted against stiffer domestic violence measures; the jerk who was fired as director of the Motor Vehicles Division for forging documents; the slimebucket who supported fellow woman-beater Senator Scott Bundgaard; the blowhard who hung out with white supremacists; the goatface who introduced a lying letter into a Senate debate on immigration to make Hispanic students look lazy, stupid, and unpatriotic; the turd who called known racists and anti-Semites to serve as expert witnesses on immigration panels; the jackass who sponsored abortion laws that were so strict Planned Parenthood was forced to close its rural clinics; the old coot who took more than $40,000 in freebies from the Fiesta Bowl; the pinhead who ignored the state's economic suffering and instead spent time on a Birther Bill, an Official Weapon Bill, and a Tea Party license plate; the dickhead who pushed through even more homophobic legislation; and the craaaazy asshole who based his theocratic views on the teachings of Cleon Skousen -- a John Bircher, women-hating fool, bigot, and Glenn Beck's true hero.
That guy, the guy who was Sheriff Joe Arpaio's deputy for more than 20 years, the guy who created Tent City, the guy behind every xenophobic bill introduced in Arizona in the last decade. That guy is kaput, gone, outta here.
Everyone, sing with me: One down, one to go.