It's primary day

Remember, what can help Arizona most is moderates who can improve the state’s standing nationally … and help bring in the federal dollars that pork disdainers like McCain and Shadegg have not.

Accordingly, the people to root for today are the weakest, dumbest and most politically wounded candidates in the various Republican primaries; they will be most vulnerable in the fall, right?

In other words, go Ben Quayle!

McCain — a bad senator, a bad person, and a bad man — seems safe from challenger J.D. Hayworth, who would have been fun to have on the ballot in November.

But there are some interesting Congressional races as well, notably the one for the retiring Shadegg’s seat, which came to national attention after Quayle’s cheesy past as a writer for a skanky web site came to light.

Again, PHXated hopes Quayle wins today, but has generously extended a blogging invitation to Quayle should he be unemployed tomorrow. The search for Scottsdale’s Foxiest Chick has just begun!

Here’s Politico’s analysis of the Gabrielle Giffords race:

The 8th District — a vast expanse that stretches south and east from Tucson, through Sierra Vista and Tombstone, all the way to a corner border with Mexico and New Mexico — provides an ideal test case to understand the degree to which national political forces might sweep aside even a polished incumbent who has steeled herself for the onslaught by paying close attention to state and local matters.

“She’s done everything she needs to do. If she loses, it would be one of those cases where it doesn’t matter how much you spent, it doesn’t matter what you do,” said Rodolfo Espino, a political science professor at Arizona State University.

Here particularly, Giffords' position will be more secure if a nut named Jesse Kelly wins the GOP primary for the seat. Politico:

Conventional political wisdom holds that candidates like him can’t attract enough support in a general election-when the electorate is considerably broader and more diverse-but Kelly seems determined to test the proposition anyway.

In a district in which nearly 17 percent of the population was 65 years old or older at the time of the last census, Kelly wants to phase out Social Security — going a step further than the plan in Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisc.) “Roadmap” that he also endorses.

Here’s 538.com’s analyses of the races:

AZ’s crowded Republican House primaries feature three contests in districts where GOPers think they have a chance of beating incumbent Democrats, and one for an open Republican seat.

The race that’s attracted the most national attention is probably in AZ-08, a Tucson-based district represented by two-term Democrat Gabby Giffords. A classic Establishment-Tea Party matchup involving former state senator Jonathan Paton, the early frontrunner, and Tea Party activist Jesse Kelley, is considered very close. Giffords is a veteran of two close races, and is building up her campaign treasury as Republicans squabble, but her opposition to the new AZ immigration law and votes for key Obama legislation have made her appear vulnerable.

In Phoenix-suburban AZ-03, where Republican John Shadegg is retiring, the early frontrunner was Ben Quayle, son of the former Veep from Indiana, but he is fighting to hold off self-funder Steve Moak. It’s been a battle of self-inflicted wounds, with Quayle hurt by association with an off-color internet site (to which he occasionally made posts under a pseudonym inspired by a porn-star character in Boogie Nights), and Moak battling claims of conflicts of interest between non-profit and for-profit businesses.

In AZ-05, another Phoenix-area district, former Maricopa County Treasurer David Schweikert is so confident of victory that he’s saving money for a general election against Democratic incumbent Harry Mitchell, but businessman Jim Ward remains financially competitive down the stretch.

And in the huge, largely rural AZ-01, dentist Paul Gosar is in a close race with 2008 nominee Sydney Hay for the right to take on freshman Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick. The incumbent beat Hay by a 56-40 margin two years ago.

… and, for variety’s sake, a sample from Greg Patterson’s:

CD 3

Conventional wisdom is that Quayle was the favorite, but self destructed with his handling of the Dirty Scottsdale revelations. That means that Moak is likely to take the race—assuming that Quayle self destructed early enough.

I think the candidate to watch is Waring. He’s represented the district for many years and he walks door to door every weekend. Remember that the race has 10 candidates and at least 7 of them are credible. So you can win with a really low vote count. CD 3 is actually looking like a large scale legislative race. That means that Waring’s shoe leather is likely to offset Moak’s money.

"Sunday Square Off," with Donna Gratehouse and Greg Patterson

Brahm Resnik’s Sunday Square Off this morning featured our own Donna Gratehouse, the Democratic Diva, along with intermittently nutty right-winger Greg Patterson, who blogs under the name Espresso Pundit; and political consultant Stan Barnes, looking at Tuesday’s state primary.

Espresso Pundit: Andrew Thomas is unfit to serve

Greg Patterson, a hard-right Republican, starts with a cheap-shot campaign sign the Thomas forces put up against Tom Horne and then runs through a litany of Thomas' greatest hits as an abuser of his office’s power as Maricopa County’s AG.

He concludes:

Thomas hand picked a fellow Republican prosecutor—Yavapai County prosecutor Sheila Polk—to look into his [contentious cases against other political figures in town]. Here’s what she concluded.

I am conservative and passionately believe in limited government, not the totalitarianism that is spreading before my eyes.

Totalitarian? Wow that’s a little harsh. It’s not like he’s been indicting his political enemies, publicly humiliating them and forcing them to go through show trials that cost them millions of dollars and ruin their careers…oh, well, never mind.

Naturally, none of the trials came to anything. All the charges against Jones, Stapley and Wilcox have been dismissed and the ridiculous “case” against the judges has fallen apart. Most of the victims have filed suits for malicious prosecution…and Thomas has said that as Attorney General he would consider using his authority to prosecute his previous victims if they receive compensation for his previous acts. So the madness continues.

The Espresso Pundit catches the Republic in a big error

We don’t really get Greg Patterson, who blogs as the Espresso Pundit.

He’s one of those guys who is always mad.

But why?

Let’s see… he was born white and male in a country fabulously accommodating to his type.

There were eight years of national Republican rule, complete with tax cuts, which surely benefitted him more than most…and his buddies have been in control of the AZ legislature since who knows when, delivering him lots more tax cuts.

The courts are turning the country over to the gun nets and corporations, his party got us into two wars that keep the Halliburtons of the world in the chips, and the country’s most popular news channel is an arm of the GOP.

But he’s always upset!

It’s weird.

Anyway, Patterson got the Republic dead to rights on a mistake in a recent editorial, which claimed that the state’s gun laws made restaurants and bars provide storage for gun owners if they don’t allow weapons.

He’s right about the correction, too… what should a paper do when an incorrect fact makes an entire article or editorial invalid?

More on the "Do illegal immigrants cause crime?" debate

The occasionally off-balance Espresso Pundit links to Tom Maguire’s conservative but rigorous Just One Minute blog, debating the premise of the NYT’s Sunday piece looking at Arizona crime figures.

(While the anti-immigrant forces harp on the supposed crimes committed by immigrants, the facts show that crime in the state has been trending broadly down for a decade.)

Maguire makes an interesting point:

That while crime is down greatly in cities like Phoenix, a careful parsing of FBI figures shows that crime is up in non-city and rural areas:

Now, note that the number of crimes is down even in smaller cities, though declining population forces the crime rate higher.

The steep rise in crime in rural areas, though, is interesting. The rate rise is nearly 50 percent. Is that due to alleged crimes committed by illegal immigrants?

Neither Greg Patterson nor Maguire make that case.

As the debate continues, these, it seem to me, are the central questions:

1) First, obviously, are the crimes committed by illegal immigrants … or just good old-fashioned god-fearing, gun-toting, wife-beating thoroughly Caucasian and all-American Arizona stock?

2) Similarly, what kind of crimes are they—car thefts, armed robbery, the sort of things that might be associated with the lurid idea of a predatory immigrant moving north?

3) Rural Arizona is a big place. Are the crimes happening in border towns or up north?

4) What number of crimes are we talking about, anyway? Again, the rate of increase is high.

In sheer numbers, though, the increase totals a bit more than 100 new crimes committed in an area the size of … well, the size of Arizona.

Ninety-nine percent of the state is rural—and the rural population totals about 4 percent of the state’s.

And 100 crimes equals … one third of one percent of the number committed in Phoenix and Tucson.

Coming to Phoenix: "Vintage Bunnies"!

We are uncharacteristically indebted to the Espresso Pundit for catching an Arizona Republic story promoting an club event in town this weekend marking the 50th anniversary of the Playboy Club.

The story says it’s one of fifty around the world. Greg Patterson, who writes the blog, pointed out rightly that the photos of bygone revelry in the clubs have all the appeal of a “whites only” sign above a drinking fountain.

And then there’s the Republic’s promotion of the event…

The iconic symbol of the Playboy bunny represents a history that now spans 50 years.

On Friday night, pretty young things from across the Valley will have a chance to become a part of that legacy …

“Pretty young things”? How about “Women with artificial boobs, attenuated ambitions, and low self-esteem”?

For Jan Brewer fans only! A Saturday morning humor reading

“Shame on you Dennis Welch and shame on you Jennifer Johnson.”

Those are the lugubrious, choked-up words of soi-disant Espresso Pundit Greg Patterson, driven nearly to tears defending the honor of Jan Brewer after she was caught lying about her father’s military record.

Welch is the Arizona Guardian reporter who quoted Brewer saying her father had died “fighting the Nazi regime in Germany.” Johnson is a state Democratic Party functionary who, like the rest of us, thinks it’s pretty cheap to try to invoke sympathy for yourself by inventing an Inglourious Basterds-style military career for your dad.

Patterson really gets going relating the noble history behind Brewer’s gaffe.

And history it is!

He begins not in medias res but, more dramatically, at the beginning:

Hitler attempts to take over the world and uses the war as cover to launch the Holocaust….

Fortunately, the Allies mobilize! But wait—back in America…

Meanwhile a guy name Wilford Drinkwine leaves a farm in the midwest and takes his family to Nevada to work in a munitions plant….

… and with an O. Henry-like twist, Drinkwine turns out to be Jan Brewer’s father!

No one would mock his death, however he died or whatever caused it. But it’s also a bit skeevy for Patterson to try to get us all worked up about Drinkwine’s death (not to mention the Holocaust) in an attempt to distract attention from what Brewer said, which was …

… that her father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany.

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Previously in PHXated:

Jan Brewer is Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World”

Jan Brewer and her father: 205 stories and counting….

Brewer doubles down on her misstatements about her father’s war record

PHXations—Wednesday, February 3

The Tucson Weekly is looking for a writer to contribute to its film coverage. They need someone to write a full-length review every other week, and contribute film-capsule reviews as well. “Ideally, the reviewer would be in Tucson, and as for pay, that depends on the experience of the reviewer.” says Editor Jimmy Boegel.

Apply through mailbag@tucsonweekly.com.

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Students at the Cronkite School have formed a Hispanics journalists club, a chapter of the NAHJ. Details on a new blog here.

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Sarah Palin’s coming back to Arizona a couple of times in the next few months. In March to do a fundraiser for John McCain, and then in May for a group called Center for Arizona Policy, which is led by creepy anti-sex crusader Cathi Herrod, who’s obsessed with abortion and gays fucking.

The Espresso Pundit, who is a good barometer of the far right’s wishfulness, if not reality per se, says:

Frankly this takes some of the wind out of McCain’s sails. There are plenty people who want to see Palin but don’t want to write a check to McCain…and a CAP check is deductible. It will be interesting to compare the turnout at the two events.

Neither he nor the PBJ story on Palin answers an obvious question about Palin’s CAP appearance: Whether she’s getting her typical $100,000 speaker’s fee.

How will Arizona's House delegation do in the 2010 elections?

(Update below.)

Over at 538.com, Tom Shaller has posted an overview of the most vulnerable Democratic House seats in 2010. The site doesn’t do on-the-ground political analysis so much as crunch numbers and assess macro factors like fund-raising.

In this case, Shaller took numbers on the races from the Cook Political Report and then added a few factors. In all, they included: The rep’s votes on health care and cap and trade; the traditional political nature of their districts; their most recent win margin; and the cash on hand they and their potential opponents have.

The bad news for Arizona Democrats is that two local House seats by these measures look vulnerable. Indeed, Harry Mitchell, of the Arizona fifth, is one of the nine most vulnerable across the country.

Gabrielle Giffords, from the eighth, is one of fifteen members on the next-most-vulnerable tier.

Their districts are superficially similar, with urban anchors in the affluent eastern parts of Phoenix and Tucson, respectively.

The Cook report is a very sophisticated operation (as 538.com is as well); I’d just make one observation that neither seems to have noted in the case of these two races; that the Arizona Republican vote in 2008 was skewed because of McCain’s favorite-son status.

McCain got less than 52 percent of the vote in Mitchell’s district, and just above 52 percent in Giffords’. It seems arguable that both would have gone at least slightly Democratic were anyone else running on the GOP side.

That said, the 2010 campaigns will be run in a much different political climate, and one without the energized folks who came out for Obama. Both parties are prepared for significant Democratic losses next year, and it’s possible two of them will come from Arizona.

For a GOP perspective on the race in the eighth, Greg Petterson points to the recent deposing of a longtime Democratic city council person in Tucson and offers this assessment:

When you are trying assess how Tuesday’s election will affect the 2010 race, remember that Tucson is the Democratic core of Gabby Gifford’s district. Yet, if the election were held today, Giffords would have to struggle to win an election in Tucson itself. Add back the Republican portions of the district and CD 8 is looking like solid Republican territory.

p.s. : As I noted above, the 538.com analysis wasn’t on-the-ground political prognosticating. It was all about crunching the numbers. Here’s the EVT’s Le Templar, who is on the ground, on an Arizona House race that didn’t get the blog’s attention:

The vice president is raising money today for one incumbent not included on that most-vulnerable list: Ann Kirkpatrick. The Congressional District 1 race is flying under the radar because Democrats have more registered voters and Kirkpatrick’s potential challengers haven’t raised much money, yet. But the district is quite conservative and Kirkpatrick won her first term in the fallout from former Rep. Rick Renzi’s criminal indictment for political corruption. There’s also this video where Kirkpatrick literally walked out of a meeting with her constituents. Expect that video to get a lot of air time and blogger references in the coming year.

My guess is Kirkpatrick will be at least as vulnerable as Mitchell and Giffords next year.

Arizona’s polity is obviously in a state of upheaval from top to bottom, and as it moved from red-state to swing-state status there will certainly be volatility. But speaking generally about the Democrats from the national perspective, it strikes me that what too often isn’t noticed is that bad times for the Democrats and the new president came conveniently early.

Just a year from the election the country seems to have hit bottom. The health-care debate and unemployment are still drags, of course. (And might turn out to be game-changers on their own if they are not resolved by next summer.)

Still, it’s an odd advantage, but an advantage nonetheless, that the party has a year to deal with the problems rather than a period of months or even weeks. That they might be resolved during that time is a possibility that is too-infrequently raised, I think.

Espresso Pundit posts the complete "Desert Divas" client list

PHXated was at a small but lively Society of Professional Journalists meeting last night, and the conversation predictably turned to the varying ways old-school media types and newer practitioners view their respective responsibility to society and their readers.

To me it’s patent that the daily newspaper world, for example, long ago forfeited its claims to moral superiority. Not because of any particular turpitude, but just because of arrogance, lassitude, and timidity.

Anyway, I thought about it again while being unable to stop myself from taking a look at the list of Desert Divas clients Greg Patterson, a conservative former state rep. who blogs as the “Espresso Pundit,” put up.

He says the list of names was already available; this, however, is a complete spreadsheet with the identities of the alleged clients, their addresses, and, most queasiness-inducing, a column of notes.

All in all, pretty grim reading:

WAS TRYING TO USE STOLEN CREDIT CARD!!!! CARD WAS IN A WOMAN’S NAME, CLAIMED HE HAD HER PERMISION

PER SCOTT AT AZ-CONFIDENTIAL DO NOT SEE EVER!!! EXTREME CASE OF HERPES!!!!

MANAGER AT THE HOTEL TOLD BRITTNEY TO LEAVE THAT IF SHE DIDNT SHE WOULD BE IN BIG TROUBLE

And, forgive me:

HAS HUGE OPEN WOUND ON HIS BELLY & VERY DIRTY – HAD LENA IN TEARS

Anyway, besides the obvious issue that not all of the names and address are necessarily correct, there’s also sensitive medical details, and even private information that probably should not have been released by the police—like security codes for apartment complexes and gated communities:

“LIKES JAMIE & JAMIE LIKES TO GO THERE GATE CODE [XXXX] BLDG # 9 APT # 2152 BELL RD & 101S”

I blocked out the code and didn’t include the full address, but you can see the problem.

Here’s how Patterson said the material was revealed:

After a few months of dead ends, I finally went to my Secret Weapon—Sal DiCiccio. Councilman DiCiccio thinks that if information is public that it should actually be available to…you know…the public. DiCiccio sent his right hand guy, former Tribune writer Hal DeKeyser to take care of it and by golly, they stone walled him too…but persistence pays off.

I’m agnostic on releasing the clients’ names; but the police department screwed up by not redacting the list of details that could help burglars and predators. And Patterson wasn’t smart by not hiding the most sensitive information himself.