Vic Williams’ Anger Management Problem

by David Safier

It seems Vic Williams, running for State House from LD-26, lost it before a recent Candidate Forum on Education held at Catalina Foothills High. He got in the face of Lisa Hawkins, who organized the event, demanding to participate even though he never responded to Hawkins’ repeated invitations. His demeanor was so aggressive, she had to ask him to step back a number of times as they were talking.

Hawkins bent the rules and allowed Williams to join the other candidates on stage but told him he would have to speak after all the others had finished. Instead, he tried to speak earlier and had to be told to sit down and wait.

Hawkins later told me that Williams insisted she had never been contacted him about the event. “I contacted him so many times I’ve got his email memorized,” she said. “I’d never met Vic, so I had no opinion about him beforehand, but the way he acted when he was demanding to be on stage . . .” She shook her head in amazement.

I was in the audience that night and had no idea about any of this until the next day. But I happened to go up to Williams at the end of the forum to ask him a question about something that confused me. When the candidates were asked to raise their hands to indicate whether or not they supported vouchers, Vic’s hand went up with those who did not support vouchers, yet I had heard him say in an earlier Clean Elections debate that he thought a trial voucher program was a good idea. I asked him about the apparent contradiction. He said, yeah, he was against vouchers, but they may be a good idea for special needs students, and maybe we should run a trial voucher program to see if they work. He clearly wasn’t enjoying our conversation. He sounded . . . the best word I can come up with is, grumpy. Realizing he had dug himself into a bit of a hole, Vic stopped and said, “Look, I’m not sure I’m making much sense. I’m operating on about two hours of sleep, OK?”

First Vic flunked his “reasonable human being” test with Hawkins. Then he flunked his “3am phone call” test with me. It wasn’t Vic’s best night.