One of the staples of any election season is the endorsement. Organizations and individuals "endorse", or recommend voting for, specific candidates.
Generally speaking, when an organization endorses a candidate, it does so because it believes that the candidate will be supportive of the organization's agenda; individuals do so for similar reasons. Most of the time, the endorsers believe the endorsees are "fellow travelers" on whatever ideological road they're all on.
Most of the time, endorsements are viewed as a "good" thing in some way, usually serving as a quick way of lending insight into a candidate's positions and even the general attitude that they would bring to the office that they are seeking.
However, as the example of of Diane Douglas (AZGOP nominee for Superintendent of Public Instruction) illustrates, that's not always actually beneficial.
From the blog website of the Maricopa County Republicans -
Hmmm...let's look at the sort of people think that Douglas is a good choice to run Arizona's schools -
State legislator Judy Burges - Arizona's Queen Birther
State legislator David Farnsworth - The "chicken in every backyard" guy
State legislator Rick Murphy - alleged child molester* (* = no charges were filed)
Former state legislator Frank Antenori - the anti-everything,"don't make me mad" guy
Former state legislator Jack Harper - there are many facets to this jewel of craziness, but we going to with just one (in the interests of brevity), so how about "The 'Democrats are just as bad as Saddam Hussein" guy"?
Former state legislator Lori Klein - also has many facets to her brand of crazy, but let's go with "read a bigoted anti-Latino letter on the floor of the Arizona State Senate"
Former state legislator Thayer Verschoor - possibly the least nutty of this bunch; main claim to fame is as anti-civil society Grover-crat
State legislator Adam Kwasman - Goes around proudly intimidating children
State legislator Darin Mitchell - elected to represent a district he didn't actually live in
State legislator Carl Seel - Arizona's Crown Prince Birther
Not on this list, but possibly the most significantly bad endorsement, is that of disgraced former state legislator Russell "poor women should be sterilized" Pearce.
Endorsements are supposed to speak well of the recipient, but that's apparently something that Douglas and her supporters don't understand.
Douglas has been campaigning by being all-but-invisible, appearing in public only when she is legally obligated to do so, or when the crowd is considered to be a completely safe (and deep-pocketed) R crowd.
That approach reduces the possibility of general election voters seeing the real Diane Douglas.
It's too bad for her that her supporters have such well-documented track records.
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