Larry Bodine

Larry is an intelligent, articulate, and insightful commentator whose views are shaped by a combination of journalism, entrepreneurship, law practice, and leadership.‎ ✍ He is an experienced and well-known leader, having served as a teacher at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute of the University of Arizona, Video Manager for Iskashitaa Refugee Network, Chair of the LD18 Democrats, and President of the Democrats of Greater Tucson.‎ ✍ A common-sense business leader, he operated a successful marketing consultancy for 20 years. He is skilled in fundraising, ChatGPT, and online communications.‎ ✍He considers multiple viewpoints before forming an opinion. His ethos is the Boy Scout Law.‎ ✍ Larry is a lifelong writer, having worked as a seven-time award-winning journalist for the New York Daily News and as the author of 600 editorials for the Blog for Arizona.‎ ✍He is a graduate of Amherst College and Seton Hall Law School and has also attended the University of Munich in Germany.‎ ✍He is not all work and no play. Larry enjoys singing and playing the guitar, watching film noir, going on outings with his Portuguese Water Dog, weight training, and meeting his many friends for lattes at breakfast.‎ ‎** Scroll down to see my articles below. **
Rep. Victoria Steele and Pamela Powers Hannley

Victoria Steele Gets a Write-in Challenger for LD9 Senate Race

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Rep. Victoria Steele and Pamela Powers Hannley
LD9 state Senate candidate Victoria Steele with Pamela Powers Hannley, LD9 House representative.

Update: this was previously titled “Democrats Get to Pick their State Senator in Tucson’s LD9.”

After getting 22,590 votes in the Democratic primary for the LD9 state Senate race in Tucson, Victoria Steele has picked up a Republican write-in opponent.

Steele, a former member of the Arizona House of Representatives from 2012 to 2016, collected 82.2% of the votes in the primary.

Now a political nobody called Randy Fleenor has gotten 698 write-in votes (363 were needed) to be the Republican candidate the November ballot. Fleenor is an electrical engineer who works at IBM. He spouts the usual GOP tripe about not raising teacher salaries, expanding school vouchers and not raising taxes.

Even though Fleenor has never been elected to public office, he was put up for the job by Republican national committeeman Bruce Ash. There will be an official hand count audit & write-in ballot tally on Sept. 1.

Steele vows to take action

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Omarosa Tell-All Book is Delicious, Nasty Reading about Trump

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During a speech at the White House last November, 71-year-old Donald Trump awkwardly reached for a bottle of water. Then he used both hands to drink it. It looked as if Trump had a small episode of some kind.

“I found it worrisome,” wrote Omarosa Manigault Newman, an assistant who had known him for nearly 15 years. “I believe that Donald Trump is physically ill. His terrible health habits have caught up with him.”

He’s obese, doesn’t exercise, eats junk food, has daily tanning bed sessions and drinks up to 8 cans of Diet Coke a day. When she first met him on The Apprentice in 2003, he was svelte and weighed 30 pounds less.

She estimates that over the last 15 years he’s poured 43,800 cans of Diet Coke into his system. Omarosa thinks it gave him dementia, based on a Boston University study linking diet soda to brain damage.

This is just one of the stories she tells in Unhinged, her nasty, trashy tell-all book about her time in the presidential campaign and the White House. Progressives will enjoy 334 pages of satisying Schadenfreude written by a woman scorned.

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Vote for AZ Candidates Who Support Marijuana Legalization

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By The Downtown Dispensary, Tucson, AZ.

One of the most effective ways to fix federal marijuana laws is to elect candidates who share the same values as those of us who realize that marijuana is the actual solution to the opioid crisis and that the right to choose an alternative medicine is not something that people like Attorney General Jeff Sessions should have a say in. One of the most likely bills to begin solving the problem is the STATES Act that would recognize the legalization of cannabis. However, we need to elect officials who will help make it law.

We must also have a Governor and state administration who support access to cannabis. As some of you are still waiting on sending in your early ballots and with the election just 11 days away, we ask you to review the information below on some of the candidates in Arizona’s 2nd congressional district and the Arizona Governor’s race. We do not believe the 1st Congressional District and 3rd Congressional District will see a change in representation and wish Congressman Grijalva and Congressman O’Halleran the best of luck.

Thank you for exercising your right to vote!
Primary Election – August 28, 2018
General Election – November 6, 2018

ARIZONA CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 2

Billy Kovacs – DEMOCRAT

“I fully support medical marijuana. We need to end the federal prohibitions on medical marijuana and allow the possession, production, and distribution of medical marijuana in states with established marijuana laws.”

According to Billy’s ads in the Tucson Weekly and the Arizona Daily Star, he supports the legalization of marijuana for adult use at the federal and state level.

SOURCE:  Billy Kovacs for Congress | Arizona Daily Star – Candidates

Ann Kirkpatrick – DEMOCRAT

Ann Kirkpatrick has voted to protect the rights of medical marijuana patients and dispensaries in 2015 but she does not support the legalization of marijuana according to statements she made at a candidate forum in Green Valley earlier this year.

SOURCE: Arizona Daily Star | Vote Results – Roll Call (Rohrbacher-Blumenauer Amendment)

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Democratic candidate for Governor David Garcia

New Book by David Garcia, Arizona Candidate for Governor, is a Blueprint to Dismantle Public Education

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An upcoming book by Governor candidate David R. Garcia entitled School Choice is a blueprint on how to dismantle public education in Arizona, complete with practical tips on how to implement school vouchers and ESAs (“empowerment scholarship accounts”).

The Blog for Arizona exclusively obtained a review copy of the 196-page book, which will be published one month after the primary elections on September 28, 2018, by The MIT Press.

The book is not an academic work. Garcia says it is for a “general audience” on page 97. It is a how-to playbook for the anti-public-school, pro-school-voucher agenda pushed by Gov. Doug Ducey and the Koch brothers, complete with strategies, arguments, legal precedents to cite, successful examples and historic points of reference.

Garcia is facing Democrats Steven Farley and Kelly Fryer in the primary. Gov. Doug Ducey is running for re-election.

As the 2018 midterms approach, Arizona is one of the biggest political battlegrounds nationwide and public education is a major issue. The Southwestern state features one of the top 9 most important state legislature races in the US in the midterm elections. Arizona is expected to decide the control of the U.S. Senate in this year’s congressional midterm elections.

Book has a strong bias against public schools

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Steve Farley cropped - at DGT August 2018

Democrat Steve Farley’s Economic Recovery Plan

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ohI9MvTUmw&feature=youtu.be
Governor candidate Steve Farley’s serious and sober ad is aimed at the age 50+ voters who dominate Tucson politics. Below is his playful 30-second TV ad is aimed at a diverse, Millennial audience and pokes fun at his political nerdiness. “I’m a policy wonk,” he says. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewuu4n2ShM8
A few years ago two companies with 3,000 jobs apiece considered relocating to Arizona. They liked the climate and the natural beauty of the state but saw two things they didn’t like and rejected Arizona. They were aware of the corporate tax breaks created by our Republican Governor, but they didn’t care about that. “That was way down the list,” they told interviewers later.

Company executives said Arizona had two big negatives — the lack of a sustainable workforce and the absence of a long-term commitment to funding public education. The GOP Governor had slashed funding to state universities, community colleges, and grade schools to pay for the corporate tax breaks, and the strategy is an economic disaster.

“This is why Amazon did not consider Arizona as a location, and why Intel has said publicly it wouldn’t be here if it didn’t have so much stranded capital at its Chandler campus,” says Steve Farley, Democratic candidate for Governor. He spoke at a rousing meeting of the Democrats of Greater Tucson.

Failed Republican economic strategy

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