David Gordon 
Great enthusiasm filled the David Garcia for Governor Rally in the main gathering room at the Arizona State University Student Pavilion on October 23, 2018 as approximately 700 people heard speaker after speaker (including Dr. Garcia and Senator and 2016 Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders) electrified the crowd and passionately called for everyone to vote for progressive Dr. Garcia and other Democrats and get family, friends, and co-workers to the polls as well.
During the course of this election season, Republican Senate Nominee Martha McSally has made much of her military background and her championing of veterans causes in general. However, voters should be made aware that on issues such as the recent tax cuts and the attempted repeal of the Affordable Care Act, McSally embraced the Republican gospel of voodoo trickle down economics and the harshness towards the ill and desperate rather than advocating the needs and welfare of her sister and brother veterans.
During the Shields and Brooks segment of the PBS Newshour on October 19, 2018, David Brooks, the center-right commentator from the New York Times rightly suggested that a closing argument for the Democrats should be “Are the behavior and actions of the President and the Republicans what you want to see in your public servants? Is their belief in what America should be your beliefs in what America should be?”
In the end, it does come down to that. Mr. Brooks is right and this can be applied to Arizona and our state leaders over the last two years as well as America and its leaders over that same period. People need to consider if they want to live in a state or a country where the trajectory over the last two years is taking us backward as opposed to forwards. Please consider:
Do we want to live in an Arizona and America where the leaders behave like demagogues, self-serving oligarchs, and, in the case of the current occupant of the White House, petty dictators, dividing us with the “big lies” and pitting us against each other?
Do we want to live in an Arizona and America where the wealthy are catered to and the poor and unfortunate shunned?
Do we want to live in an Arizona and America where corrupt oligarchs and plutocrats pay equally corrupt public servants behind the scenes with dark money to achieve their ends?
Do we want to live in an Arizona and America where our women are potentially denied the right to choose when needed?
Once upon a time, mainstream politicians would stay far away from politicians that have been endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan or those who have taken pictures with white supremacists. That was the era before Donald Trump.
Now, as most Republican candidates (including Martha McSally and Doug Ducey) in Arizona fall over themselves to meet him at a rally in Mesa, it does not appear to matter that he was. Even in Arizona, this behavior appears to have no consequences as Doug Ducey took a picture with known white supremacists earlier this year. In another time (over two years ago), that might have dealt a deathblow to his reelection campaign. Not today and it is a shame because it teaches our children some wrong lessons about the value of a person’s character in our public servants.
Trump, The KKK-endorsed candidate and popular vote loser, spent October 19, 2018, in Arizona on a campaign swing to help Republican Senate candidate Martha McSally after her abysmal debate performance on October 15. True to form, he spent his time at a rally in Mesa wowing the crowd that traveled hours to see him, McSally, and the other state Republican candidates with outlandish remarks complementing Republicans for policies that they were not responsible for and accusing Democrats of acts either untrue or ones that Republicans or their supporters are guilty of. It is almost as if they were looking through the Alt-Right Looking Glass and mistaking the Democrats for themselves.
Arizona Voters were able to see for the first time and only time this election season the two party nominees vying to succeed Senator Jeff Flake in the November elections. People watching were treated to two candidates, Representative Kyrsten Sinema, and Representative Martha McSally who both displayed contrasting visions and temperaments to the viewing public. Democratic … Read more