Bundgaard in full spin mode

State Sen. Scott Bundgaard (R-Domestic Violence Incident) has spent most of the week trying to keep his positions as a state senator and as Republican majority leader in the state senate.

Thus far, he has been successful (barely!) at fending off moves to replace him as majority leader and has not even hinted that he is repentant enough to resign his position.

However, the sharks are circling, and instead of maintain a quiet profile, he has been churning up the waters, putting out outlandish press releases and giving dubious interviews.

His PR flack put out a press release loudly proclaiming that Bundgaard had "aced" a polygraph test administered by someone hired by the Bundgaard camp (the Arizona Republic's EJ Montini has his take here; Donna at Democratic Diva has her take here; Tedski at Rum, Romanism and Rebellion has his take here.)

Then on Friday, he sat down with Laurie Roberts, another Arizona Republic columnist and gave an interview where he presented a gun in a plastic baggy, claiming that it was the gun that his now ex-girlfriend Aubry Ballard pulled on his during the infamous incident on SR-51 two weeks ago.

He even did this in front of a camera crew from KPNX, Phoenix channel 12 (the Republic and KPNX are both owned by Gannett).

Now, I'm not overly familiar with police evidence handling protocols (and I actually consider that to be a good thing), but it seems strange that they would give a vital piece of evidence in the investigation of a possible serious crime to one of the people involved in that possible crime.

A fact serving to further undermine Bundgaard's credibility is the fact that a gun isn't mentioned *anywhere* in the police report about the incident.

Another fact serving to undermine his credibility is that the story of a "gun" didn't come out until pressure from his own Republican colleagues to step aside as majority leader came to a head on Tuesday during a closed-door meeting called to discuss his status.

During the video shown on KPNX, Bundgaard and his flack promised that more facts on the incident would come out next week.

Given the way that his "facts" are destroying his political future, perhaps Bundgaard should fire his current PR flack and hire one whose one and only instruction to Bundgaard is -

SHUT THE [BLEEP] UP!

Jus' sayin'...