Posted by AzBlueMeanie: POLITICO reports today, Dem poll: Carmona up 4 over Flake: POLITICO's Scott Wong reports: An internal poll for Senate Democrats shows former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona leading Republican Rep. Jeff Flake by 4 percentage points – a figure consistent with recent polling that has the candidates locked in a dead heat. … Read more

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

This weekly Latino Decisions Tracking Poll has President Obama expanding his lead to 80% of poll respondents. The new poll out Wednesday suggests his support among the group is even larger in Arizona:

Why Arizona may be the surprise of 2012 – the big Latino vote that you didn’t see coming

New polling data out of Arizona released by America’s Voice and Latino Decisions suggests Arizona may be much closer than the polling averages indicate.  A full 80% of Latinos say they plan to vote for Obama, compared to just 14% for Romney, and Latino enthusiasm is much, much higher in Arizona than the national average.  In Latino Decisions national tracking poll 34% of Latinos say they are more excited about voting in 2012 while 36% say they were more excited back in 2008.  In Arizona 60% are more enthusiastic in 2012 compared to just 16% who were more enthused in 2008.

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If Latino turnout is high in Arizona this year, it will be the Nevada of 2012 that takes the mainstream media by surprise.

Full results of the Arizona Latino poll are posted here.  Among the poll highlights:

Arizona Latinos Favor Democrats by Wide Margins

• In the presidential race, 80% of Arizona Latinos said they will vote for President Obama, while 14% said they will vote for Romney and 6% are undecided. The largest vote share for Obama of any state.
• In the U.S. Senate race, 75% of Arizona Latinos said they will vote for Richard Carmona (D), while 12% said they will vote for Rep. Jeff Flake (R) and 13% are undecided.
• In addition, 69% of Arizona Latinos said they will vote for the Democratic candidate in their U.S. House race, while 14% will vote Republican and another 14% are undecided.

Candidates’ Immigration Positions Matter to Arizona Latinos

• 68% of respondents said that immigration was “the most important issue” or “one of the most important issues” in their voting decisions this year.
• After hearing about President Obama’s deferred action policy, 64% of respondents said that they were “more enthusiastic” about voting for Obama and 5% said that they were “less enthusiastic.” Meanwhile, after hearing about Mitt Romney’s statements on “self-deportation” and his support for Arizona’s SB 1070, 8% of respondents said that they were “more enthusiastic” about Romney and 67% of respondents said that they were “less enthusiastic.”
• Upon learning of Jeff Flake’s vote against the DREAM Act in 2010 and his support for increasing “border security instead of trying to stop the Arizona immigration law,” 59% of respondents said that they were “less enthusiastic” about Flake, while 8% said they were “more enthusiastic” about him.
• After hearing about Richard Carmona’s support for the DREAM Act and his praise of the Obama administration’s deferred action policy, 73% of respondents said that they felt “more enthusiastic” about Carmona, while only 5% said that they felt “less enthusiastic.”

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Our Southern Arizona Tea-Publican enablers for our colonial overlords from the state of Maricopa have been hating on the City of Tucson and Pima County for years, trying to subjugate its "librul guvmint."

They have micromanaged Pima County and the City of Tucson:

• Imposed a Rio Nuevo Board appointed by our colonial overlords from the state of Maricopa; their appointees proved to be as incompetent as the board members they replaced. State of Maricopa appointed Rio Nuevo District Board is costing taxpayers for litigation (the "troika" of John Munger, Jodi Bain and Jonathan "Payday" Paton, Josh Brodesky: Rio Nuevo is troika's plaything);
• Sought to dictate new election rules on the Charter City of Tucson (Arizona Supreme Court unanimously rejects 'Paton's Law'), and Ted "tort reform" Vogt tried to slip in the Vogt floor amendment to an election bill (SB 1331) that would have benefitted his brother the Phisher King, Tyler, Vogt, in his (failed) city council bid;
• Sought to impose new rules for contract bids for government services (SB 1332) and limit the ability of cities to impose impact fees on developers (SB 1525);
• Sought to eliminat the civil service merit selection system for Pima County employees Frank Antenori's secret plan to end civil service merit selection system for county employees;
• Stole millions of dollars from state revenue sharing and HURF funds to "balance" the state budget leaving us without enough money to even fill our potholes. Now the City of Tucson is forced into a bond election (Prop. 409) to repair its streets $100M bond to fix local streets deserves support;
• Confiscated a wastewater treatment facility from Pima County to hand over to the Town of Marana (represented by Jonathan "Payday" Paton) without just compensation to Pima County Disputed treatment plant goes to Marana;
• Ted "tort reform" Vogt and his idiot sidekick Vic Williams showed up at the Pima County Board of Supervisors and tried to intimidate the board over fund sweeps by the legislature State lawmaker calls Tucson a "corpse" and Pima County taxpayers dig deep to pay for state cuts;
• Sought to impose a new authority that would give Marana, Oro Valley and Sahuarita, together, veto power over new borrowing for roads and other projects in Pima County Panel would let 3 towns veto county bonds.

The list goes on and on.

by David Safier Tom Horne hired the woman who ran an Independent Expenditure campaign for him — an IE he may have been too closely connected with — despite questions about her qualifications. He was involved in a hit-and-run accident while another employee, who, it's said, he's carried on a long term sexual relationship with, … Read more

Posted by Bob Lord So, the Wall Street Journal chose to give scumbag Jack Welch a platform from which to double down. You can read it here. Apparently, Welch's only remorse was that he didn't include question marks after his October 5th tweet recklessly accusing the President of manipulating the jobs numbers. Yeah right, Jack. … Read more

by David Safier I have no idea how someone makes this kind of thing happen, but here's a screen shot of what you get when you type "completely wrong" in Google Images. Hat tip to Donna Gratehouse.

by David Safier Florida uses paper ballots,and the results are tallied by an optical scan election system. Sample auditing of the ballots is done after the elections are certified. In two recent races, the machines flipped the votes, awarding the victories to the wrong candidates. According to Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections, Susan Bucher, this … Read more