Year: 2018

A Voter Guide to the Democratic Nominees Blog for Arizona Interviewed this year

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With the election days away, we have included links to all the articles pertaining to profiles compiled on the federal, state, and local Democratic nominees running for office this year. Please review them so they can help you make the best decision when voting these next two and a half weeks.

Furthermore, please consider the following when deciding whether or not to vote this election:

  • If you think we can do better than one in four children in Arizona living in poverty, then vote in November.
  • If you think we can do better than being near the bottom in the nation in education funding, then vote in November.
  • If you agree with gubernatorial candidate David Garcia that “no one should be left behind,” then vote in November.
  • If you agree with Superintendent of Public Instruction candidate Kathy Hoffman that the “future of Arizona is in our schools,” then vote in November.
  • If you agree with Attorney General candidate January Contreras that public service should be about the “little guy and democracy” and the people, especially the most vulnerable (like those with pre-existing health conditions), need to be protected, then vote in November.
  • If you agree with Treasurer candidate Mark Manoil that local and state Arizona economic development would be better served with local community banks than Wall Street banks, then vote in November.
  • If you want Arizona to be the solar capital of the country and greater utility investments steered towards solar, water, and wind like Corporation Commission candidate Kiana Sears, then vote in November.
  • If you want the stench of Dark Money removed from the public arena as most of the Democratic local and state candidates want, then vote in November.
  • If you want public servants like this year’s Democratic candidates that listen to their constituents and show up to public forums and debates, then vote in November.
  • If you want all civil rights protected, including the right for women to choose and the newly recognized rights for members of the LGBTQ community, then vote this November.

All elections are important. The 2018 elections may be more so because if the forces of reaction, intolerance, and backwardness are allowed to prevail, it may be a long time before we recover.

Please Remember To Vote In November.

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Democrats arrive late, but ‘blue wave’ momentum is building

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Anyone who has ever been active in Democratic Party politics knows that Democrats always arrive late and no event ever starts on time.

After a slow start in early mail-in ballot returns in the first couple of weeks of early voting, for which I chastised you, Democrats finally started showing up late in the final week of early voting. Keep it up through Election Day.

Arizona Democrats have seen a massive surge in early voting over the past week, bolstering predictions for a “blue wave” in Tuesday’s elections. ‘The blue wave is real’: Arizona Democrats see major surge in early voting turnout:

Early ballot returns released Friday [Secretary of State Early Ballot Statistics] show Democrats are on track to narrow the voter-participation gap with Republicans to its lowest level in any midterm election in recent history.

That surge in Democratic participation could help the party flip close races or win contests for the U.S. Senate, secretary of state and superintendent of public instruction.

Democrats had significantly lagged Republicans when early ballot returns started coming in three weeks ago, leading some to speculate that the blue wave had crested.

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But that changed over the past week as Democrats shaved the GOP’s early-vote advantage to less than 8 percentage points. Republicans typically have a 12 percentage-point turnout edge in midterm elections.

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The Arizona Republic endorses Tom O’Halleran for CD 1

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Wendy Rogers is a perennial GOP candidate who has never won anything until this year, when she won the GOP primary in CD 1 by smearing her opponent Steve Smith. Citing ugly politics, Steve Smith tells GOP rival Wendy Rogers to quit Arizona’s CD1 race.

CD 1 Congressman Tom O’Halleran

Then there was the incident involving Arizona GOP field organizers working on behalf of the Rogers campaign who tried to set up Rep. Tom O’Halleran with a fake communist party contribution dirty tricks operation that backfired on them badly. AZ GOP field organizers pull a classic Roger Stone, supposedly fired over it.

Wendy Rogers is running a close second only to Martha McSally for the most dishonest, deceitful and nasty campaign of this cycle. Tim Steller of the Arizona Daily Star noted Friday:

100 PERCENT PURE FEAR

I’ve noted in previous columns the absurd fear-mongering of Republican congressional candidate Wendy Rogers. She has associated Democratic incumbent Tom O’Halleran with Antifa and made the main thrust of her campaign the idea that Democrats represent violence and mob rule.

This week, Rogers put out an ad that injects a 100-percent pure dose of fear into the amygdalas of her supporters. “Refugees or invaders?” the spot begins. “They’re testing our president, and they’re testing America.” In the background there is sinister-looking footage of the recent migrant caravan in Mexico. The narrator goes on to say that if O’Halleran is elected, “mob rule” will replace the rule of law and “our America” will be “gone forever.”

The timing was ironic considering that the ad came out the week after a passionate Trump supporter was arrested for mailing a dozen pipe bombs to prominent Democrats and Trump critics. No, O’Halleran has not put out an ad saying that Republicans are terrorists, even after this attempted political violence.

So it should come as no surprise that The Arizona Republic endorses incumbent Democrat Tom O’Halleran for reelection. Wendy Rogers or Tom O’Halleran? This congressional race has stark differences:

The district is currently represented by Democratic Rep. Tom O’Halleran, a first-term congressman seeking re-election. He is challenged by Republican Wendy Rogers in her fourth bid for Congress.

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The Party of Trump is unworthy of winning

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“The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning. ” – Adlai E. Stevenson

The white identity, white grievance, white nationalist Party of Trump fka the Republican Party is built upon four pillars: ignorance, fear, hatred of others, and an unrelenting stream of pathological lies. President Trump has made 6,420 false or misleading claims over 649 days.

The Party of Trump is unworthy of winning.

It is a political party which has forfeited any claim to legitimacy in the American tradition and within acceptable norms. It has become the crypto-fascist authoritarian wet dream of Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller and their useful idiot, Donald Trump.

As conservative commentator Max Boot warns, “[T]he Republican Party must be destroyed before it can be rebuilt.” Vote against all Republicans. Every single one.

I’m sick and tired of a president who pretends that a caravan of impoverished refugees is an “invasion” by “unknown Middle Easterners” and “bad thugs” — and whose [propagandists] on Fox News aka Trump TV pretend the refugees are bringing leprosy and smallpox to the United States. (Smallpox was eliminated about 40 years ago.)

Mike Allen of Axios adds, “In one of the most blatant and misleading attempts ever to scare American voters days before an election, President Trump is warning in speeches, tweets, interviews and ads that scary, deadly migrants are about to storm our southern border. Almost none of what he warns is demonstrably true, at least in terms of scale and scope of threat.” Reality check: Trump is pushing fake news on the migrant caravan. New York Times fact check of the day, Trump’s Falsehood-Laden Speech on Immigration.

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Why Oprah votes … and wants you to

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Oprah Winfrey delivered an impassioned call to voters Thursday in a fiery stump speech in support of Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Stumping for Abrams, Oprah makes impassioned plea for turnout:

“I’m here today because of the men and because of the women who were lynched, who were humiliated, who were discriminated against, who were suppressed, who were repressed and oppressed, for the right for the equality at the polls,” Winfrey said. “And I want you to know that their blood has seeped into my DNA, and I refuse to let their sacrifices be in vain. I refuse.”

Video link.

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Oprah then recounted the story of Otis Moss, Sr., a black man who tried to vote on election day in Georgia but was given the runaround by white poll workers. He walked for 18 hours that day to three different polling places, and at the end of the day he was told “Boy, you’re too late, the polls are closed.” And he never never had a chance to vote. By the time the next election came around he had died.

Oprah then says, “So when I go to the polls and I cast my ballot, I cast it for a man I never knew. I cast it for Otis Moss, Sr. who walked 18 miles one day just for the chance to vote.”

“And when I stand in the polls I do as Maya Angelou says, ‘I come as one but I stand as 10,000.'” “For all those who paved the way that we might have the right to vote.”

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