The ‘woman warrior’ comes out of hiding in her chicken bunker, gets smacked down by the ladies

Once again, I owe Jim Nintzel at the Tucson Weekly a debt of gratitude for being the last real reporter in Tucson. I pointed out last week that Tea-Publican candidate for Congress Martha McSally is a ventriloquist puppet who simply mouths the words that her puppeteer, “douche bag Danny” Scarpinato, a former political reporter hack with the Arizona Daily Star who now flacks for the RNCC, tells her to say. (And the Arizona Daily Star continues to reproduce his press releases like good little stenographers.) Martha McSally proves my point: There is no ‘there’ there.

Jim Nintzel revisits the Paycheck Fairness Act “controversy” from last week, and confirms that it was “douche bag Danny” Scarpinato projecting the words into the mouth of his ventriloquist puppet, McSally. Female Trouble:

Contacted last week as to where those stats came from, MsSally spokeswoman Kristen Douglas directed the Weekly to the NRCC.

NRCC spokesman Daniel Scarpinato said that he’d applied a strict reading of the formula and crunched the data to come up with the statistics for Barber’s office. He conceded in an email that the calculation was based on “a silly formula that doesn’t take into account important factors—but Barber is the one touting it in the largest media outlet in his district.”

In a subsequent conversation, Scarpinato said the outcome within Barber’s office was part of the point he was trying to make: The 77-cent statistic that Barber cited isn’t a particularly good way to measure how well women fare in the workplace compared to men.

The real figures, of course, show that Barber’s “three most highly paid staffers are all women and of the 21 full-time workers in his office, 13 are women and eight are men. Their calculation salary of the office showed that women earned a median salary of $45,744 a year, while men earned a median salary of $39,870.”

Nintzel also has news to report: Martha McSally has finally come out of hiding in her chicken bunker and taken a position on an issue!

When it comes to the fundamental policy question regarding whether Congress should pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, Barber and McSally actually agree that they both support the bill.

Barber is a co-sponsor of the legislation, which has stalled in the GOP-controlled House. And McSally told the Weekly she would vote in favor of it as well.

Of course, even when they agree, the candidates find a way to disagree.

“As someone who has fought for women my entire life, I know first-hand that women are still not treated equally in the workplace, and if I was in Congress, I would vote for the Paycheck Fairness Act because it’s the right thing to do,” McSally said via email.

* * *

That brought a sharp retort from Team Barber’s Nash-Hahn.

“Glad to see McSally take her finger out of the wind and actually take a position on an issue,” Nash-Hahn told the Weekly via email. “Hopefully we will see McSally come out of hiding on the other issues important to women. She should join Ron Barber in opposing Paul Ryan’s reckless plan to raise taxes on working women–which she told us she would vote for. She should also join Ron in supporting a woman’s right to choose. Fortunately for us, with Ron, we don’t have to guess about where he stands. He comes out and tells us in plain English, without excuses.”

Oh, snap!

McSally is also taking criticism from the Northwest Explorer in the northern reaches of CD 2 this week. Editor Thelma Grimes writes, The gloves are coming off:

[Barber] seems a little more in favor of women’s rights over McSally. McSally is anti-abortion, and she didn’t support the recently-failed equal pay act for women. [I believe she means the Paycheck Fairness Act, which McSally told the Tucson Weekly she does support.]

It was interesting to get a glimpse of her position in a recent article posted on the Wall Street Journal web page, where a 2012 comment was revived.

“I mean, I’m a woman warrior,” she said in 2012. “I’ve been fighting for women’s rights and women’s equality my whole life. You want to talk about a war on women? Walk in my shoes down the streets of Kabul. Walk in my shoes down the streets of Riyadh, where women have to be covered up, where they’re stoned, where they’re honor-killed if they’ve been raped, where they can’t drive and they can’t travel without the permission of a male relative. That’s a war on women.”

While the comments from McSally are powerful, and definitely bring into perspective how women in countries such as Afghanistan are treated compared to right here at home in America, what she may not understand is we don’t just want better. We women want to be treated equally. We want to be able to decide what happens with our own bodies, we want to be paid what our male counterparts are paid.

If you’re not going to fight for that, you will likely continue losing that female/minority vote that Republicans continue to forget to count in campaign planning.

Ow, that’s going to leave a mark!

I fail to see how having “douche bag Danny” Scarpinato run McSally’s campaign is a winning strategy. He ran Jonathan Paton’s sure-fired campaign for Congress in 2010 and lost in the GOP primary to unknown teabagger Jesse Kelly. Oops! As a flak for the RNCC in 2012, he was involved with Jesse Kelly’s special election in the Spring and lost, Jonathan Paton’s “comeback” campaign for Congress and lost, and  Martha McSally’s general election campaign and lost.  He probably was involved in Vernon Parker’s loss to Kyrsten Sinema as well. This guy is the kiss of death to any campaign.

I suppose we should all be grateful for that.