Short attention span musing

A couple of newly-instituted awards this week...

...Winning award for "Scariest Elected Official of the Week" is our own Maricopa County DA, Andrew "Kill 'em quick and let God sort out the mistakes" Thomas.

The reason for Thomas's victory is best illustrated by this interesting sequence -

On the AZ Rep website (and this may change by the time you go to the front page), is the headline "Faster death-penalty trials?" that links to an article about the county attorney's efforts to speed up the capital trial, appeals, and execution process. He's upset that there aren't enough qualified public defenders for all of the defendants that he wants to kill. He has called for the existing death-qualified defense attorneys to take on more cases.

Directly below that headline is one that states "Ajo Al's owner cleared of charges". It links to an article concerning a case where the county attorney brought criminal charges against a restaurant for health code violations. He held a big press conference and everything.

He ignored one little detail though; a detail that resulted in the dismissal.

The restaurant had already been sanctioned and corrected the code violations.

That darn double jeopardy thingie. How's a DA supposed to run an efficient railroad with that getting in the way?

...The "Dumbest Elected Official of the Week" award goes to Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco.

Seems he had an extramarital affair with the wife of a close friend; not a good thing for his political career, but hardly a certain end to it. Bill Clinton survived the hubbub surrounding his affair, and at least two people who are known to have cheated on their wives, at least in the past, are candidates for president in 2008 (Giuliani and Gingrich.)

The really dumb part? Not only was his girlfriend, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, the wife of a close friend; that close friend, Alex Tourk, is his campaign manager.

Make that "was" his campaign manager as Tourk resigned on January 31.

All of which should make for an interesting conversation when Mayor Newsom starts interviewing for a replacement campaign manager:

Interviewee: "So, Mr. Mayor, why is this position available?"

Newsom: "Well, there was some inappropriate boinking going on, and the situation had to be dealt with."

Interviewee: "Oh? Who was he boinking?"

Newsom: "Errr...ummm...."

As the Time Magazine article linked above points out, the biggest issue for Newsom may not be the affair itself, but the fact that he betrayed not only his own wife but his closest and most loyal confidant. Pretty dumb when you're asking people to place their trust in him and to cast their vote for him.

And that is what merits the "Dumbest..." award.

...In JD Hayworth news, he has earned the "Sloppiest (Un-) Elected Official" award of the week.

In his "Year-End" filing with the FEC, covering the period from November 28 thru December 31, 2006, he reported period contributions of $136.00, with cycle-to-date contributions of $15,592.17. The rest of the report had similarly low numbers for both the period and cycle-to-date.

In his "Post-General" report, covering through November 27, 2006, he reported cycle-to-date contributions of $2,932,181.67.

That's a decrease in cycle contributions of $2,916,589.50 in a 34-day period.

That's also either accounting fraud on an almost Enron-esque level, or the sloppy attention to detail of a profoundly disappointed losing candidate.

My guess, based on the fact that there were other glitches in the report (dates and such) and also on the expectation that he is going to run for office again is that this is simple sloppiness and will be corrected in an amended report.

It's still fun to point out, though. :)

Note: assuming that one detail from the form is accurate, Hayworth still has over $200,000 cash on hand. That's a nice amount of seed money if he decides to challenge Harry Mitchell in 2008, or try for John McCain's U.S. Senate seat in 2010.

Note2: The Mitchell campaign's year-end report lists cash-on-hand at just under $21,000.

Have a great weekend!