Bee’s Campaign Got $100K from Tucson Taxpayers

UPDATE: Looks like local media have decided that it’s OK to cover this story and are providing blanket coverage of Timmy’s windfall at taxpayer expense: Citizen, Channel 13, Star, Fox 11, Star again, Scarp’s Notebook.

President Bush came to Tucson to raise $600K for Bee in July. The visit had no public purpose whatever. That visit has cost Tucson taxpayers $100K. That tax money might as well have just been put in Bee’s coffers. And you can be sure that Bee won’t be reimbursing the city. Instead, that’s $100K from the Tucson Police Department’s and Pima County Sheriff’s budgets that should be used for fighting crime in our city that instead went to help election Tim Bee.

Of course, the $100K of taxpayer money spent locally to support Bee’s ambitions are just a drop in the bucket. Add in the cost of bringing Bush here in terms of logistics, security, fuel, and man-hours, and I feel confident that most if not all of that $600K was essentially transferred from the public fisc into Bee’s warchest.

Conservatives should be angry on principle about using taxpayer money, especially money that should be helping to protect our citizens from criminals, to help raise campaign loot for any candidate. And you know they certainly would be if it were a Democratic President visiting Tucson solely to rake in the campaign cash for Gabby.

But of course Republicans will look the other way and ignore their principles with an eye to the main chance of putting Bee in Congress. In nutshell, this is what is wrong with putting our public offices up essentially to the highest bidder. Tim Bee, by getting taxpayers to foot the bill for his bid for power, has made the corruption inherent in the system downright putrid.