Throwing stones at Glassman while living in a glass house

Greg Patterson, the former state legislator who writes the Republican blog Espresso Pundit, is widely considered the dean of R bloggers in Arizona, and also one of the best. While he almost always is wrong (he *is* a Republican, ya know), he usually makes his points intelligently and civilly.

Well, apparently he has abandoned intelligence so that he can jump on the IOKIYAR bandwagon.

From his post criticizing one of the supporters of the Glassman for Senate campaign -

I thought the small print in his announcement was interesting...

Co-Chairs: Flagstaff Mayor Sara Presler, Phoenix Councilman Michael Nowakowski, Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez

Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez? She's in charge of elections in Pima County. What is the elections director doing endorsing a candidate? Is she going to recuse herself from this election cycle?

I can understand Patterson's wariness when an official who oversees elections seems to endorse a candidate in an election he/she oversees. Even the appearance of impropriety can undermine Arizonans' faith in their political system.

As happened in 2004, when then-Secretary of State Jan Brewer, the state's senior election official, was one of the AZ co-chairs of Bush/Cheney 2004.

Yet there was nary a mention of Brewer doing the same thing that he has criticized Rodriguez for in his post.

Normally, I don't directly call out another blogger on his postings. However, Patterson moves in higher circles than most bloggers, including me, because of the respect he has earned through his years in the blogosphere. That higher level of respect comes hand-in-hand with higher expectations.

If the anonymous writers at Seeing Red AZ or even the mostly anonymous ones at Sonoran Alliance want to engage in a little "do as we say, not as we do" hypocrisy, nobody much says anything because they really aren't expected to be better than that.

There are only a couple of bloggers in AZ who *are* expected to be better than that**, and Patterson is one of them.


** = Tedski at R-Cubed, before he suspended his blogging to concentrate on his campaign for the lege, is the other.

Later...