John McCain

TOMORROW: Senate Judiciary Committee To Question Mike Liburdi For Judgeship; Trump Nomination Bypassed Arizona Senators

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Mike Liburdi will have his hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow morning. Liburdi was nominated last month by Presdient Donald Trump to fill one of the two judicial vacancies on Arizona’s U.S. District Court bench.

Liburdi was Governor Doug Ducey’s General Counsel between 2015-2018. He applied for the lifetime appointment in August of last year by going directly to the Department of Justice. In 2016-17, he had not been considered by a judicial selection committee that had been set up by Arizona’s two Senators.

Typically, the Senators recommend individuals to the Administration for such nominations in their home states – particularly when the Senators and the President are of the same party. For example, the other pending judicial nomination from Arizona was vetted and recommended by McCain and Flake in early 2017.

Hon. Bridget Bade’s nomination for a position on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week on a remarkably bipartisan vote of 17-5. Her nomination is now ready to be voted on by the entire Senate.

The differing pathways for the Bade and Liburdi nominations was set forth in their written submissions to the Committee, and lays bare some of the tension that existed between Trump, McCain and Flake.

Bade is an uncontroversial pick both because of her judicial experience as a U.S. Magistrate

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Eight Reasons McSally Lost

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I have been a Republican my entire adult life, I was an active duty military officer and am a combat veteran and I, like many were fooled into believing that the GOP cared about veterans, fiscal stewardship of our military and, yes, I was even fooled into thinking they cared about women and minorities. Fox News and Right-Wing Talk Radio is quite the strong narcotic. But on the night Trump was nominated by the GOP, I had enough, I left the Republican Party the next day, and I never looked back, and I never will. I am a Democrat now, and while this political party is not perfect, it is not the toxic brew of hate bigotry and misogyny that the GOP has morphed into – with zero pushback from virtually all of its members.

When Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema announced she was going to run for Jeff Flake’s Senate seat, I was all in. I immediately volunteered in any way I could. I texted thousands of Arizonans, wrote articles, and helped tell her story to Arizona veterans. As a Tucson native, combat veteran and the spouse of an active duty military member – I wanted the voice of vets like me to be heard. I wanted to help Sinema win this seat and make sure that Martha McSally and her Trumpist rhetoric lost not only her Congressional seat in Tucson, but this coveted Arizona Senate seat as well.

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Pima County Republicans Cheer Kelli Ward, who Jeers McSally

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This is part one of a two-part article on what the Republicans say behind closed doors. Part two is  GOP Legislative Candidate Marilyn Wiles has an Anti-Tucson Agenda

GOP Senate Candidate Kelli Ward
GOP Senate Candidate Kelli Ward

Republicans at this month’s Pima County GOP meeting gave rousing rounds of applause to tea party darling Kelli Ward, a primary candidate for US Senate, who gloated over her lead in recent polls, fawned over Ted Cruz and ripped into fellow Republicans Martha McSally and John McCain.

Republicans packed the meeting last Tuesday at the Murphy-Wilmot Library in Tucson, with a crowd of 75 to 100 people. Ward was repeated greeting with loud applause.

Asked how she differentiates herself from her rival, Congressman Martha McSally, Ward said:

“You all live in Martha’s district. You all know how she’s been as a congresswoman. In language that she can understand: she’s failed the check ride [a pilot’s exam — because McSally was a pilot].  We certainly don’t promote the people who failed the check ride, we promote people who get the job done. I have a 98 rating with the American Conservative Union, tied with Mike Pence.”

“Passion Points”

She called her platform “passion points” including the following:

  • Ejecting the UN from the United States. “I don’t think that they should be on United States soil. I don’t we should be investing so much money in the UN,” she said.

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Martha McSally Exposed as the Worst Kind of Politician

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Martha McSally video
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:

“I refused 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.”

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GOP Strategist Says Republicans May Lose in Races Across Arizona

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Republican Strategist Sam Stone
Republican Strategist Sam Stone

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.”

The leading Republican contender is Lea Marquez-Peterson, the CEO of several Hispanic chambers of commerce and owner of bankrupt gas stations. See Fear Dominates Secret Tucson GOP CD 2 Congressional Candidate Forum.

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.

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