Lea Marquez Peterson filed for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy to unload $3.2 million in debt, tax liens, and a judgment.
Lea “Chapter 7” Marquez-Peterson spent most of a recent MSNBC interview ducking questions — at first disavowing Trump because she is a “local candidate,” then later saying she would be “honored” to have him visit Tucson.
Peterson is a Republican candidate for Congress in Tucson’s CD2. There are 7 Democratic candidates vying for the chance to run against her.
No criticism of anti-Hispanic ex-sheriff
She played dumb when it came to Trump’s pardon of convicted ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio. “I really don’t have a position on President Trump’s pardoning of Sheriff Joe.”
REALLY? Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt of court for refusing to obey court orders to stop his immigration roundups based on racially profiling Hispanic people.
She runs a ring of Hispanic chambers of commerce that she says has 1,800 members, but they serve as platforms for Governor Ducey and other Republican officials.
She said she’d likely support a discharge effort in House of Representatives to force a vote on legislation to support Dreamers. She defended Trump’s calling immigrants as “animals,” because she said he was referring to gang members from Mexico.
Even among the hard right, McSally’s announcement video ad was received as confusing, weird, and ultra-Trumpian.
On a beautiful day in January, retired Air Force Colonel Martha McSally, the elusive Arizona Republican Congresswoman from Tucson, who has incredibly not held a Town Hall in close to three years, stood in front of a small crowd of VIPs congregated in a private airplane hangar (east of Tucson) and declared her candidacy for Arizona Senate. Her rally was an over the top, hyper-nationalistic “barn burner” of an occasion, where McSally told the crowd that she was ready to – as they say in the Air Force: Fly, Fight and Win.
McSally dressed up in her old A-10 flight suit, awkwardly rattled off some sort of racist stuff about the Mexican-American border, Sharia Law, and Trump’s Wall – then hopped in the back seat of a shiny WWII T-6 vintage trainer plane. She was then flown, by another pilot to Phoenix and Prescott for further campaign rallies – it was over-the-top self-aggrandizement.
U.S. Rep Martha McSally, a two-term Republican from Tucson and a former Air Force combat pilot is running for the same Senate seat which U.S. Senator Jeff Flake will retire from following his fiery rebuke of President Trump’s fascist tendencies on the Senate floor. The three-candidate, dogfight of a primary pits McSally, (the clear choice of the GOP establishment), against pardoned Sheriff Arpaio of Fountain Hills and conspiracy theorist Kelli Ward, a former state senator from Lake Havasu City, both of whom will be battling to win the party’s conservative base. Just last week, McSally was endorsed by our state’s former governor, Jan Brewer.
Confusing and weird
In the digital ad that accompanied her “Fly, Fight, Win” campaign rallies, McSally walks among aircraft and bizarrely declares:
“Irefused to bow down to Sharia Law, and like our president, I am tired of DC politicians and their BS excuses – I am a fighter pilot and I talk like one. That’s why I told Washington Republicans to grown a pair of ovaries and get the job done.”
Regardless who the Republicans choose as their candidate for the Arizona US Senate seat, a new poll shows Democratic Congress member Kyrsten Sinema winning against them.
The survey by OH Predictive Insights and ABC15 says that the key reason is independent voters, who have a very negative view of GOP leader President Trump, and the negative view that voters in general have of Republicans Kelli Ward, Joe Arpaio, and Martha McSally.
And this is despite the 12% advantage that the GOP has (1,223,219 registered Republicans) over Democrats (1,090,310 registered Democrats) in Arizona. The survey sample reflected the Republican +12-point advantage over Democrats.
Democrats are unified
“The issue we are consistently seeing in the numbers is that Democrats are unified, Republicans are less united, and the all-important Independent voters are trending anti-Republican/Trump” said Mike Noble, managing partner at OH Predictive Insights of Phoenix. “The factors to look for will be if there are enough voters that do not view Trump favorably that still vote the Republican party.”
The survey did not mention Democrat Deedra Abboud, an attorney and Muslim-American community activist, whom Sinema faces in the August 28 primary.
Speaking on KVOI radio 1030 in Tucson, Republican strategist Sam Stone says there may be statewide losses for Republican candidates in the mid-term elections.
“I do think we’re heading into something of a [blue] wave. … If you’re in Wisconsin and other states, Democrats have been undervoting in the last three cycles now and they’re going to come out, absolutely. The question is, are Republicans? So far, the answer in the special elections has been ‘no.’ We’re fat and happy with the presidency,” he said.
Stone is Chief of staff of Republican City Councilman Sal DiCiccio in Phoenix and a former campaign advisor to Martha McSally. He was interviewed on the John C. Scott political forum, which is now on the radio Saturdays 4 to 6 pm.
Asked if there will be a “blue wave” in Arizona, he said, “potentially a little bit.” He said Democrats may win the races for Secretary of State and Superintendent of Public Instruction.
The race for in Tucson’s CD2
He foresees a Republican defeat in Tucson’s Congressional District 2, even as he sneered, “the Democratic bench that is running in CD2 is pretty pathetically weak. You’ve got a carpetbagger and a bunch of people who Lea Marquez Peterson would normally slaughter. Whoever comes out of that may well win that race.”
Though people disagree, former congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick is seen as the Democratic front-runner in a primary contest with Mary Matiella, Billy Kovacs, Bruce Wheeler, Matt Heinz, Babara Sherry and others.
Stone said president Trump’s “waned popularity” is a problem for Marquez-Peterson. “Lea has the advantage of clarity that didn’t exist for Martha McSally in the last three years. … The electorate that first elected Martha McSally [in 2014], both in both the Republican primary and general election, is not the electorate that is enamored of Trump. You can run away from him. The electorate that is enamored of him is about 40% of the Republican primary base. She [Marquez-Peterson] has a relatively open primary, she really is not contested very much. So for her, doesn’t need to stray into Trump territory.”
President Trump’s base is “30% of the Republican primary base, and it incredibly strong with him. The rest of the folks who went along [with Trump] voted against Hillary Clinton and for Neil Gorsuch and for a conservative majority supreme court. If he continues to ignore and really inflame larger swaths of the country, those folks aren’t necessarily with him, that voted for him,” Stone said.
Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema is running for US Senate.
Congress member Kyrsten Sinema is the odds-on favorite to beat the gaggle of wacky Republicans, including mean Joe Arpaio, kooky Kelli Ward and seldom-seen Martha McSally for the US Senate seat for Arizona.
Sinema spoke at the Democrats of Greater Tucson and was poised, intelligent and articulate. “I launched a campaign for Senate to cut through the chaos and dysfunction in Washington and finally get some stuff done. The enthusiasm on the ground is like nothing like I’ve seen before. Our campaign is building a statewide team we’ll need to reach voters who are more motivated than ever to make a change,” she said.
Sinema is a three-term Congresswoman from the 9th Congressional District in Phoenix, first elected in 2012. A member of the Democratic Party, she served in both chambers of the State Legislature, being elected to the Arizona House of Representatives in 2004 and the Arizona Senate in 2010.
She has a compelling personal story of growing up homeless in a gas station. Saying, “I knew I could make it if I got a good education,” she went to BYU with the help of student loans, academic scholarships, and financial aid, and then ASU, where she now teaches Legal Issues in Social Work.
The American Dream
“I am a product of the American dream. And my way of paying my debt to society is public service. It is my commitment as a United States Senator that I will continue to do the work as I have done to be accountable, to listen even to people with whom I disagree, and to make best decisions in the best interests of my community,” she says.
