AZ Congressional Delegation

Wilcox makes a dick move against Gallego in AZ07

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Let me disclose that I’ve been for Ruben Gallego since he announced he was running for the seat that veteran Congressman Ed Pastor is retiring from this year. I haven’t made an issue of it because I’m not well versed in the political climate of South Phoenix, despite having a lot of friends there. I’m just impressed by Ruben’s accomplishments and his vigor and, let’s face it, the guy has a solid track record of electoral success, both for his own campaigns and those of others.

I also didn’t have any major beef with Mary Rose Wilcox. It’s purely anecdotal, but that was the sense I got from a lot of Gallego supporters. I have not encountered the kind of animus toward Ruben’s main opponent in the CD07 race that you often see in contested primaries. If anything, Gallego supporters (at least the ones I’ve been around) haven’t liked everything she’s done as a County Supervisor but they were sympathetic to Wilcox over her travails with the Maricopa County Sheriff and former County Attorney.

But then Wilcox’s camp had to go and launch the dumbest and most ham-fisted attack I’ve seen in a long time. Yes, this article is behind a paywall but I’m quoting the relevant facts here:

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Time to admit it: Trying to get immigration reform from Republicans is a waste of time

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

statue of liberty

When Eric Cantor lost his primary Tuesday night, and his position as House Majority Leader, a lot of liberals were exultant because why the hell shouldn’t we be? It was comical watching the whole thing unfold, since the Cantor camp had been assured of a 30 point victory by their own advisers. And Eric Cantor is a dick anyway. A huge wingnut. A wingnut with access to lots of money, therefore an “establishment Republican”, but that didn’t moderate a single one of his stances. It’s been Cantor leading the GOP House majority in obstructionism, even to the point of endangering the country’s solvency.

Oh wait, he was “good on immigration” or something like that, so I’ve been told by party poopers who insist that “immigration reform is dead now”. Meh. It’s true that immigration reform is looking pretty moribund these days, but that already the case before Cantor’s primary loss. I’m not sure what people think Eric Cantor would have done on immigration in the next few weeks that he won’t now that he’ll be resigning as Majority Leader next month. His past performance on the issue has certainly been less than impressive, as Vox‘s Dara Lind explains:

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Coalition files complaint on behalf of refugee children in Nogales

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E.J. Montini of the Arizona Republic picks up where I left off in yesterday’s post about the Central American refugee children in Nogales. Politicial hacks treat immigrant kids like rotten fruit:

JesusFacepalm2Hundreds of young border crossers from Central America were shipped by bus from Texas to Arizona and stacked like rotting fruit in a warehouse, and instead of saying, “How can we help?” the first thing Arizona politicians and political candidates said was, “Who can we blame?”

I blame them — for a lack of compassion, of conscience, of humanity.

It’s a long list, stretching from Republican gubernatorial candidates like State Treasurer Doug Ducey to members of Congress to Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery to Gov. Jan Brewer to elected officials whose names you wouldn’t recognize (for good reason.)

The word Wednesday is that a coalition of civil and human rights groups has filed an administrative complaint with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security demanding that the department reform policies that, according to a press release from the group, “have permitted enduring and widespread abuses of children in the custody of U.S. border officials.”

[The press release from the ACLU is below.]

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Sham Cesar Chavez candidate demonstrates the importance of partisans

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The candidate named Cesar Chavez, running in the Congressional primary in AZ CD7, has been revealed to be a guy formerly named Scott Fistler who was a Republican until recently and had sought other offices in the past as a member of that party.

After petitioning a state superior court last November and paying $319, Fistler now legally shares the name of the celebrated labor movement icon, Cesar Chavez. Earlier this year, Chavez (formerly Fistler) became a Democrat, and – before Ed Pastor announced his retirement from Congress – filed to run in the heavily Hispanic 7th Congressional District.

In his petition for a name change, Fistler wrote that he had “experienced many hardships because of my name.”

It’s unclear at this point whether this guy is a lone wolf or someone who was recruited to act as a spoiler – a la Olivia Cortes in the 2011 Russell Pearce recall. Either way, he’s a sham candidate and such candidacies are an affront to democracy and the community and (even more reprehensibly) often exploitive of highly vulnerable people, even if the candidates (or whoever puts them up to it) follow the letter of the law to qualify for the ballot. Chavez (nee Fistler) managed to get the maximum number of signatures and the state Dem party is exploring what options they have, if any, to remove him from the ballot.

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Action Alert: Call your senators and tell them to vote for Sen. Bernie Sander’s VA bill

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mccain_flakeEarlier this week I reminded you about The real VA scandal: GOP filibustered the VA bill in February. That’s right, Arizona’s senators Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber filibustered the VA bill because they wanted an amendment that would have undermined current negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, because Neocon war monger John McCain wants to get his war on with Iran. Also, because it “costs too much” and “adds to the debt.”

Congress should have thought of that before it created a boatload of veterans in need of health care because of the unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq that George W. Bush put on the nation’s credit card creating that debt.

Our veterans were made a promise for their service to their country. Raise taxes on the wealthy who did not serve their country in Iraq and Afghanistan, but who financially profited off the military-industrial complex to pay for veterans health care going forward. This is the price of freedom — who are these Plutocrats to deny those who served in their place?

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