Pima County Races

May 31, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

For far too many years county offices have been decided by incumbents simply filing to run. County offices attract little interest for some reason. There is rarely ever a primary contest, and almost as infrequently a general election contest.

Not this year. We have an actual election for Pima County offices this year. First, there will be GOP clown car primaries for Pima County Supervisor District 1 and for Pima County Sheriff. Even "Sugar Ray" Carroll has a Tea Party challenger in Pima County Supervisor District 4. When the Tea-Publicans get done carving each other up in their primary, there will be a general election contest in most races. There are even a couple of Democratic primaries for Constable races.

School board candidates have a later filing deadline, and are not included.

Pima County Supervisor District 1
(No Incumbent – Open Seat)

Nancy Young Wright (D)

Mike Hellon (R)

Stuart McDaniel (R)

Ally Miller (R)

Vic Williams (R)

Pima County Supervisor District 2

Ramón Valadez (D) (Inc.)

James Kelley (R)

Pima County Supervisor District 3

Sharon Bronson (D) (Inc.)

Tanner Bell (R)

Pima County Supervisor District 4

Ray Carroll (R) (Inc.)

Sean Collins (R)

Pima County Supervisor District 5

Richard Elías (D) (Inc.)

Fernando Gonzales (R)

Updated SWAG – Filers as of 5:00 p.m. on May 30

May 30, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Today was the filing deadline for candidates for state office. They had until 5:00 p.m. to file. The Arizona Secretary of State web site was updated at 6:47 p.m.

There are several names who did not make the earlier SWAG list who filed today. There were some surprises. There may be independents qualified that I have not yet verified. The legislative districts are limited to Baja Arizona.

UPDATE: The only "independent" I find filed is Doug Quelland in the new LD 20. There may be write-in candidates on the primary ballot but I do not find them listed at the SoS web site at this time.

UPDATE: SoS last update May 31 at 11:15 a.m.

Filed candidates have a after their name.

CD 8 Special Election (to complete the term of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords) June 12th:

Ron Barber (D) 

Jesse Kelly (R)

Charlie Manolakis (GRN)

Vote for your kindly grandpa Russell Pearce for State Senate

May 30, 2012

by David Safier H/t to Randy Parraz for putting the Ice Cream Social fundraiser invite with this pic of Russell Pearce on Facebook. Your kindly old Gramps wants your vote. The event is also a fundraiser for Lester Pearce who's running for County Supervisor. And Sheriff Joe is the special guest — if he shows … Read more

Comments on the Paul Cunningham story

May 30, 2012

by David Safier I have no insider information on the allegations of improper sexual remarks by Paul Cunningham. I only know what I read in this morning's Star and the Sentinel. Both stories are sketchy and incomplete because they either lack primary sources or can't reveal their sources. The Sentinel article is the more detailed … Read more

Rolling Stone must-read articles

May 30, 2012

Posted by AzblueMeanie:

Rolling Stone magazine has for some time now had some of the best political reporting in the business, which is kind of odd since the magazine is primarily about the music entertainment business.

Then again, the news media which is supposed to be primarily about political reporting spends much of its time on the entertainment business. As the Kinks once sang, "It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world."

Josh Kosman has a preview of his upcoming book 'The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Is Destroying Jobs and Killing The American Economy', in Why Private Equity Really Is the Worst of Capitalism:

By placing his career at Bain Capital at the center of his presidential campaign, former buyout artist Mitt Romney has put the private equity industry on trial.

About time.

Romney wants us to believe that critics of private equity are against capitalism. They’re not. They’re against a predatory system created and perpetuated by Wall Street solely to pump its own profits.

* * *

Romney’s whole election pitch turns on the story he tells about his time at Bain, which goes like this: I, Mitt, have a record of building businesses and creating jobs, and what I did for floundering companies, I'll do for the U.S. economy.

There's only one problem with Romney's story: It doesn’t describe most of what private equity firms actually do. The companies Romney holds up as successes – Staples, Sports Authority et al. – were not Bain private equity deals; they were venture capital investments in companies that Bain neither owned nor ran. All well and good: Venture capital is a good thing – essential for funding the growth of new and developing companies. But Romney didn't make his fortune through venture capital­; he made it through private equity – and private equity, as President Obama pointed out this week, is a very different proposition. "Their priority is to maximize profits," the president said of PE firms, and "that’s not always going to be good for businesses or communities or workers."

Here’s what private equity is really about: A firm like Bain obtains cheap credit and uses it to acquire a company in a "leveraged buyout." "Leverage" refers to the fact that the company being purchased is forced to pay for about 70 percent of its own acquisition, by taking out loans. If this sounds like an odd arrangement, that's because it is. Imagine a homebuyer purchasing a house and making the bank responsible for repaying its own loan, and you start to get the picture.

Massachusetts under the microscope

May 30, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Greg Sargent reports at The Plum Line today that the Obama campaing is opening a new front against the Romney campaign by putting his record as governor of Massachusetts under the microscope. Romney has studiously avoided his tenure are governor and does not want to talk about it, so this should get interesting:

Job One for the Obama campaign is to undermine what appears to be a widespread presumption of Romney’s economic competence, and ABC News reports that the Obama team is redoubling their efforts on this front, by launching a new and aggressive campaign targeting Romney’s economic tenure as Massachusetts governor:

The Obama campaign is opening a new front in its war against GOP rival Mitt Romney, ABC News has learned, with planned attacks to begin this week on Romney’s record as governor of Massachusetts and the campaign promises Democrats say he left unfulfilled.

Team Obama will point to Romney’s rhetoric on job creation, size of government, education, deficits and taxes during the 2002 gubernatorial campaign and draw parallels with his presidential stump speeches of 2012. The goal is to illustrate that Romney has made the same promises before with unimpressive results, officials say…the latest line of attack will be a major focus from now through the election.

This again points to Obama’s core challenge. Romney wants the election to be all about the President. As Steve Kornacki put it recently, Romney’s pitch is: “If you don’t think the economy’s in good shape, don’t ask questions – just vote the guy in charge out.” Obama needs to persuade voters to do more than simply accept Romney as an alternative to the economic status quo who’s worth taking a flyer on. He needs to get them to look past general impressions of Romney’s competence and to realize that Romney is offering an actual set of policies and ideas about the economy that have been tried before. His “Mr. Fix It” aura — which is rooted in the pitch that he can translate private sector know-how to the public sector — is belied by his actual record as a public official.

The point the Obama campaign needs to drive home is that Romney has already tried to bring his private sector experience to bear on the public sector, even if he isn’t eager to talk about it. Hence the broadening of the case against Romney that we’re about to see.