Pima County Attorney Laura Conover Nails Her Primary Opponent as a Fake Democrat

Pima County Attorney Laura Conover identified Mark Jette, her opponent in the Democratic primary, as a Republican imposter. Speaking at the June 10 meeting of Democrats of Oro Valley, Conover said:

• “He changed his registration [in 2020] and is running in our Democratic primary. It’s not how we should be doing things.”
• Jette got a “massive donation” from Republican villain and anti-abortion advocate David Mehl. Mehl sat on the Independent Redistricting Commission in 2021 and gerrymandered the entire state to favor Republicans. “In November, Mehl spent $20,000 of his own money to defeat the Arizona Abortion Initiative. Three months later, he made a massive donation to my opponent,” Conover said.
• “We have to believe my opponent the first time he tells us where he stands on the major issues while he raises an absolute fortune in Republican Trump MAGA money.”

At a separate meeting, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said, “What the Republicans are doing in Pima County by running one of their own in a Democratic primary is unprecedented and, frankly, something that we are not taking lightly.”

The facts show that Jette is indeed a stealth Republican

• He ran as a Republican for County Attorney in 2012.
• He lives in Legislative District 20. But the Democratic District Chair says Jette has not canvassed, written a postcard, held a fundraiser, or made calls for Democrats. He came to an LD20 meeting in March but not after that. He is not even a precinct committee person.
• The right-wing Goldwater Institute supports Jette.
• Jette campaigned on four different programs on right-wing talk radio, KVOI, including the shows of Bruce Ash — the former national Committeeman of the Republican Party of Arizona  — and pro-MAGA announcer Chris DeSimone. Their audience is Republicans, and Democrats do not listen to right-wing talk radio.

For more information, read Exposed: The Coordinated Vendetta Attack on Pima County Prosecutor Laura Conover.

Jette supports “maternal care,” not abortion.

The screenshot below of Mike Jette’s website as of March 1, 2021, shows that he called for “maternal choice.” It was retrieved from the public Internet Archive see https://web.archive.org/web/20240307080633/https://mikejette.com/

“Maternal care” was removed on April 26, 2024, and replaced with “If you are pro-choice, Mike Jette is the right choice.” 

Maternal care and abortion are not the same. Maternal care is the medical care provided to a woman during pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum. It includes prenatal care, labor and delivery, and postpartum care. Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy.

Today, Jette says on his website that he “is pro-choice and will always defend abortion rights.” Conover noted, “When my opponent launched his campaign, he put up a website, and he said he wanted to promote ‘maternal choice.’ And for those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a very deceptive way of saying that when a woman has made her choice, she then comes into a provider, and then they tell her about all her other choices because the choice she made is the worst. Think crisis pregnancy center.”

“A week or two later, he yanked down his website and put up a new website. Thank heavens that screenshots last forever because when you tell us who you are and what you believe in the first time, we really should believe it.”

Conover added, “I avowed at the beginning of this campaign that I would abide by Michelle Obama’s way of life, which is, when they go low, we go high. And I’m not sure I realized how low they were going to go. But here we are.”

“My opponent’s campaign is really ugly. It was not like anything I’d ever seen in Southern Arizona in Democratic politics. But then again, he had to change parties in order to run in our democracy.”

Bungling a murder trial

Jette likes to claim that he’s a “proficient” trial lawyer. However, he bungled the trial of a Nogales rancher who killed 48-year-old Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea in 2023 by shooting him in the back as he fled. Jette picked the jury, but the case ended in a hung jury on April 22. Jette had managed to accept seven jurors who were leaning towards acquittal, according to the defense team.

It was an open-and-shut case. The rancher fired nine shots from an AK-47 rifle at a group of men. He was charged with second-degree murder, which requires only that the killer intentionally or knowingly killed another person without premeditation. Somehow, Jette failed to get this across to the jury, and the Santa Cruz Attorney decided to drop the case afterward.

Richard Bowen of Midtown wrote in today’s Daily Star, “I don’t know if Jette is usually like that, but he often seemed unprepared and even bumbling in court, not great attributes for a legal department. Jette got eaten alive, in my opinion.”

In contrast, Conover said, “After two years of pulling together to conquer violent crime, we are 43 percent down on homicides from two years ago. Robbery is close behind. We are making sustained progress at a faster and healthier rate than the rest of the states in the nation.”

The Jette campaign has spewed misinformation about Conover. “I have seen them claim that we have 23 prosecutors. We have 56 prosecutors. If we only had 23, we would be in serious danger,” Conover said.

Conover said she had solved the office’s staffing issues that began under her predecessor, Barbara Lawall, by hiring ten new prosecutors. Her new hires bring the prosecutors up to 66. Her predecessor had 85 prosecutors but let the staff dwindle to only 61 when Conover arrived in office in 2021.

The election for County Attorney will take place on July 30, and early ballots will be sent out in early July.