Update re: Southern Arizona legislator questionnaires in the Daily Star

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Last week Blog for Arizona ran the series of Southern Arizona legislator questionnaires published in the Arizona Daily Star. Only one Republican legislator responded to the questionnaire, Sen. Jonathan Paton, because he is planning to run for Congress. He will have to do a better job than the obtuse evasive answers he provided.

Readers were left to speculate why the Republicans boycotted the Star's questionnaire. Today Jim Nintzel offers a possible explanation for the GOP boycott in the The Skinny | Tucson Weekly:

[T]he big humiliation for Humenik came when most of the Republicans in the Southern Arizona delegation simply refused to respond at all.

We hear the boycott was led by Rep. Frank Antenori, although he was uncharacteristically humble when we asked him about it, telling us: "I don't want to take credit for it. It was a mutual decision. … But I advocated hard, let's put it that way."

Antenori, who has had heartburn over the morning daily's editorial-page staff ever since they refused to run an op-ed that he submitted, says that Republicans are wary of the Star's liberal bias on the editorial pages.

"I'm just done with them," Antenori said, although he added that he's still happy to talk to Star reporters.

The questionnaire boycott led to a heated exchange between Antenori and Humenik at a January meet-and-greet sponsored by the Arizona Newspapers Association, where the two ended up in a shouting match.

* * *

Antenori says there's a simple way for Humenik to mend fences: "I told him all of this would go away if he would simply put a conservative on the editorial board. … But he won't do it. He won't put an alternative point of view in there."

There has been a disturbing pattern of authoritarianism from our Southern Arizona Republican legislators. Let's review.

These Republicans, led by Jonathan Paton, have tried to dictate to Tucson Unified School District the content of ethnic studies classes. They have in fact dictated to the City of Tucson that its Rio Nuevo Development board will be appointed by Maricopa County politicians (it is little comfort that these Southern Arizona Republicans will be consulted). They have also dictated to the City of Tucson how it is to conduct municipal elections. And Frank Antenori recently threatened the Pima County Board of Supervisors to extort an appointment to Jonathan Paton's soon-to-be-vacated senate seat.

The purpose and intent of these authoritarian moves is to bring Pima County, and Tucson in particular, under the thumb of the wingnut Maricopa County GOP leadership. Anyone who follows what is going on in Maricopa County government and politics knows how fucked up Maricopa County is. And these Southern Arizona Republicans want to render Pima County subservient to Maricopa County Republicans? Fuhgettaboutit!

These Republicans' attempt to dictate to Tucson's only daily newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star, that it's editorial board must be conservative is laughable. The syndicated columnists published in the Arizona Daily Star are almost all right-wing shills. And as David Safier has been tracking, the Arizona Daily Star has a copy editor (or two) who like to engage in shall we say creative re-writing of headlines to give them a political bias not reflected within the body of the report.

Conservatives still refer to the Arizona Daily Star as "the Red Star," which also is laughable in its ridiculousness. Since Lee Enterprises purchased the newspaper several years ago, the newspaper has taken a decisively rightward tilt. First it was Daniel Scarpinato and now it is Rob O'Dell who write Republican spin for them. The editorial page is but only a weak imitation of the Arizona Daily Star's once former greatness.

David Fitzsimmons got it right last week with his portrayal of Southern Arizona's Republican legislators. They are but lapdogs for the wingnuts in the Maricopa County GOP leadership. Southern Arizona will not bow down to Maricopa County, nor will we tolerate the betrayal of these Judases in our midst. ¡Viva Baja Arizona!