Turns out that Russell Pearce is far more well-rounded than I gave him credit for...

...I thought he was just a thoroughgoing bigot, but according to someone who knows him better than I do, he is also petty, vindictive, and prone to violence.

Earlier, I put up a post that covered State Sen. Russell Pearce's (R-National Alliance) attempts to interject himself into a legal conflict between the Tohono O'odham nation and the City of Glendale over a proposed tribal casino on the edge of Glendale.

At that time, I speculated that Pearce's interest in the situation stemmed from a basic dislike of Native Americans (they may be "Natives," but they aren't "natives," ya know what I mean?), but thanks to Greg Patterson at Espresso Pundit, I humbly stand corrected.

From Patterson's post on (roughly) the same topic (he started off talking about an anti-Prop 302 mailer) -

...But that's only one reason why Legislators like Pearce are ticked off. Look who else sponsored the mailer...that's right, the tribes. If you are new to the legislative process, you may ask yourself what the Tohono O'odam's opposition to Prop 302 has to do with the Tohono O'odam casino in Glendale? The answer is that it has everything to do with it. Everything in the Legisature is connected. That means that if the Legislature creates Prop 302 in order to avoid steep cuts in services and the Tohono O'odam use Indian Gaming money to kill that Proposition, then the Legislature is likely to go after the Tohono O'dam's casino.

Seriously, did you not even watch one episode of the Sopranos?

Prop 302 is likely to fail. So the legislature is going to have a $400 million hole in its budget. Naturally, they will use the cover that Eddie and Nadine Basha have provided and cut as much as they can out of the budget.

But they will still need revenue...and they sure as heck aren't going to raise taxes. So they are out of borrowing capacity, and they can't have the First Things First money because their first proposal was shot down by the Tribes. So what's left?

Well, Indian Gaming is left. Of course they can't take the money from the tribes...but they can COMPETE with the tribes.

Something tells me that real-life mobsters will be insulted by the comparison...
Apparently, free speech protections only apply to people who agree with Pearce and the other small "n" nativists. All others should just take the abuse, shut up, and like it.


So, in one brief passage, he details how Pearce (and his colleagues in the R caucus of the lege) is going after the Tohono O'odham because they've dared to oppose his move to defund and destroy early childhood education in Arizona in order to pay for corporate tax cuts.  And he compares his fellow Rs to mobsters.

Nice.