Y u no wanna namecheck me anymore Shawnna?
AZ Representative Dr. Eric Meyer (D-28) sent out a statement calling on his Republican opponent Shawnna Bolick to denounce Russell Pearce for his recent comments extolling forced sterilization of poor women. Pearce had proudly endorsed Bolick, even going so far as to recommend single-shotting her. Bolick responded to Meyer thusly:
Crossposted at DemocraticDiva.com
Let’s say you are Sean Noble, a Koch-ed up dark money operative who has been the focus of some negative attention for your activities. You’d probably prefer to be known for something else in the midst of a heated general election cycle in Arizona, where you are the manager of the GOP candidate for Attorney General. Then it comes to your attention that former AZ Senate President Russell Pearce has said some vile things in public, as he is wont to do. And as right wingers are wont to do so often, Pearce focused his wrath on poor women. In this case Pearce says that poor women on public assistance should be forcibly sterilized.
Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com
I crosspost what I post at Democratic Diva over at Blog for Arizona, and a lot (not all by any means but a lot) of what I blog about is reproductive rights. I do so because I pay close attention to the issue as it’s something I care deeply about and consider hugely important but also because I assume that anyone who pays only a modicum of attention to US and Arizona politics has noticed how intent anti-choice activists and their allies in the Republican party have been on ruthlessly attacking women’s reproductive rights. These attacks take a variety of legal forms – arbitrary late term bans, waiting periods, TRAP laws, attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, so-called “conscience clauses”, the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS decision, women actually being prosecuted for stillbirth and miscarriages, etc. – and I don’t expect the average person to be up on all of them. I would expect, however, expect the average person who is motivated to comment on a liberal political blog to be aware of at least some of them. But apparently this is too much to expect, as I have Blog for AZ commenters informing me that Roe v Wade settled everything in perpetuity and that abortion and contraception will always be available. Okay.
Since Blog for Arizona broke the story, new insights into Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal’s secret life as an Internet troll continue to be revealed as bloggers and journalists study years of online comments.
Between Tucson Progressive blog and Blog for Arizona (BfAZ), there are nearly 400 comments from Thucydides or Flacon9, but there could be more unknown Huppenthal posts out there.
An anonymous tipster now claims that someone with the online name “Thucydides” has made comments on at least one white nation (WN) website. Are BfAZ Thucycides and WN Thucydides the same person? No one knows. BfAZ figured out that Thucydides was Huppenthal by analyzing comments, e-mail address, and IP addresses. Three key findings cemented the identification: Thucydides posted from a Department of Education computer, Thucydides commented from a computer in Japan when Huppenthal was there, and one Thucydides comment was signed by Huppenthal. In the case of the alleged WN comments, the NSA probably knows if they exist and has access to the email addresses or the IP addresses for comparison– but we don’t… yet.
Would it be a big surprise to find out the Huppenthal is sympathetic to white nationalist beliefs? Not really. From his anonymous comments, we already have proof he is a racist– something he has been accused of for many years. Let’s look at his history and his policies.
The candidate named Cesar Chavez, running in the Congressional primary in AZ CD7, has been revealed to be a guy formerly named Scott Fistler who was a Republican until recently and had sought other offices in the past as a member of that party.
After petitioning a state superior court last November and paying $319, Fistler now legally shares the name of the celebrated labor movement icon, Cesar Chavez. Earlier this year, Chavez (formerly Fistler) became a Democrat, and – before Ed Pastor announced his retirement from Congress – filed to run in the heavily Hispanic 7th Congressional District.
In his petition for a name change, Fistler wrote that he had “experienced many hardships because of my name.”
It’s unclear at this point whether this guy is a lone wolf or someone who was recruited to act as a spoiler – a la Olivia Cortes in the 2011 Russell Pearce recall. Either way, he’s a sham candidate and such candidacies are an affront to democracy and the community and (even more reprehensibly) often exploitive of highly vulnerable people, even if the candidates (or whoever puts them up to it) follow the letter of the law to qualify for the ballot. Chavez (nee Fistler) managed to get the maximum number of signatures and the state Dem party is exploring what options they have, if any, to remove him from the ballot.