Pearce facing challengers for his seat in the AZ Senate

While State Senator Russell Pearce (R-National Alliance) has been traipsing across the country and the cable news shows crowing about his police state bill, challengers have been lining up for a chance to represent West Mesa in the Arizona State Senate.

...In February, Robert H. McDonald announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the LD18 Senate seat.

...In mid-April, Andrea Garcia formed a committee to pursue the Libertarian nomination in LD18.

...A week later in April, Andrew Sherwood formed a committee for the Democratic nomination, setting up a primary on the Democratic side of the ballot, something that hasn't happened since at least 1992 (which was as far back as I checked. The area covered by LD18 now was LD29 in the 1990s. Before that, I don't know what district it was.)

During the last nine election cycles, there hasn't been even one instance of a contested primary on the D side of the Senate ballot. In fact, in many of the cycles, there hasn't been even one Democratic challenger for the Senate seat.

*Two" Democrats duking it out for the chance to unseat Pearce after years of token opposition (and not even that much of of the time)? Be still my beating heart...

I don't know much about Sherwood or McDonald at this point, but Garcia has turned in her nominating petitions. On her website, she even talks about how she submitted "nearly twice the required number [of signatures] to qualify for the August 24th primary election."

Sounds like a groundswell of support, if only of the ABRP variety (ABRP = Anybody But Russell Pearce), right?

It does, until you find out that as a Libertarian, she only needs 6 signatures to qualify for the ballot.

She submitted 11, so her "nearly twice the required number" statement *is* technically true, but... :)

Anyway, after months of embarrassing the state and years of doing everything except for representing his district, Pearce looks to be facing serious competition this time around.

Later...