Pima Dems launch “Al Melvin Week”

by David Safier

The Pima County Democratic Party has given Al Melvin his very own week, devoted to his, shall we say, "Greatest Hits."

As a Melvin watcher, I know the Pima Dems have their work cut out for them trying to choose from the voluminous record of howlers and mouth dropping votes Melvin has amassed in a single term in office.

The Pima Dems has narrowed it down to "his five most outrageous votes," starting with Number Five.

Number Five: Voting against the Lopez Amendment, requiring Arizona schools teach the Holocaust. Melvin found it important enough to micromanage school curricula by banning ethnic studies programs but he voted to make teaching that the Nazis killed 6 million Jews optional.

When the legislature was debating the anti-Ethnic Studies bill, Democrat Linda Lopez proposed an amendment that made sure the law didn't prohibit teaching about the Holocaust and other acts of genocide and mass murder. After all, it's hard not to promote a certain amount of "resentment toward a race or class of people" — which is forbidden by the bill — when you're teaching about their brutal slaughter of a racial, religious or ethnic group.

In one of those bizarre and comical moments which are so common on the floor of the Arizona legislature, the Republicans voted against the amendment, simply because a Democrat proposed it. Then came the moment when it dawned on them what they did.

I imagine they saw the headline, "Republicans ban teaching of the Holocaust from Arizona history classes." Oops.

Slowly, over a period of 7 or 8 minutes, the Republicans walked back their votes one at a time, changing them from No to Yes.

But not Cap'n Al. He stuck with his original No vote.

Yes, it's true. Melvin's No vote is enshrined in the legislative record.

His message to history teachers: you should be careful if you plan to teach about the Holocaust. And you might think twice before you teach about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And here's one that you should probably stay away from completely, since it's sure to promote "resentment toward a race or class of people": the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11. Who knows how much resentment that might stir up?