The melodrama continues in Scottsdale politics

When Councilman Tony Nelssen succumbed to cancer, he left a vacancy on the Scottsdale City Council.

The City Charter clearly states that the remaining members of the Council shall appoint a replacement, but no procedure for doing so is specified. As such, things can get a little creative on those occasions when an appointment is necessary.

This was seen at last Tuesday's meeting, which took place on the same day as Nelssen's memorial service. There, Mayor Jim Lane tried to use the emotions of the day to guilt the Council into immediately appointing Nelssen's widow, Marg, to fill the vacancy on the Council.

The move failed on a 3 - 3 tie vote. Lane, Bob Littlefield, and Lisa Borowsky were in favor; Suzanne Klapp, Ron McCullagh, and Wayne Ecton were opposed. That's the normal breakdown when controversial issues go before the Council, and before his death, Nelssen was the fourth vote in the Lane clique.

In the linked AZ Republic article, Lane is quoted as calling the votes of McCullagh, Klapp, and Ecton an "affront." Many of the commenters on the article agreed with that, calling McCullagh, Klapp, and Ecton "boorish," "grasping," "wankers," and more.

I know certain readers are going to disagree with me on this, but NO, not even close.

If anyone involved was "boorish" it was Lane for trying to take advantage of the genuine grief that many in the city feel over the loss of Tony Nelssen in a shameless attempt to reload the Council with a lockstep majority in his favor.

If Lane had simply waited a week, he would have appeared to be a compassionate and wise (almost statesman-like) public servant instead of a cynical political operative.

As it is, the appointment of a replacement will happen this week (Tuesday, 4 p.m., City Hall Kiva), and it will take place without the public viewing the proceedings through grief-tinged lenses.

Right now, it looks as if each remaining member of the Council will nominate someone to fill the open seat, and a series of votes will be taken. Sources expect (as do I) that when the listof candidates is winnowed down to two candidates, the Council will reach an impasse (aka - another 3 - 3 split) and the names of the two finalists will be placed in a hat with the seat going to whichever name is drawn from the hat.

Also expected (though not guaranteed): Marg Nelssen will be one of the finalists. She has expressed in interest in being one of the candidates, and after last week's very public moon shot by Lane, he is too wedded to the idea of appointing her for him to move his support to someone else.

Tuesday's meeting should be the most openly contentious one of the year, and should provide *lots* of writing material. :)

See you there...

"Defending Arizona" - Congressman Harry Mitchell on border and immigration issues

From an email to the Congressman's constituents -

Our state continues to pay a heavy and unfair price for the federal government’s failure to secure our borders and fix our broken immigration system. The federal government has a responsibility to act – it simply hasn't done so – and Arizona continues to shoulder the burden.

As you know, illegal immigration affects Arizona more than it does any other state – more than half of all illegal crossings over the U.S.-Mexico border happen here in Arizona. Specifically, here in the Valley, this has enabled smugglers and Mexican drug cartels to set up vast networks of drop houses, which operate as gateway stations for their illegal activities. The crime and violence associated with these drop houses is tragic and completely unacceptable. Upon being elected to Congress, I asked for a Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation into federal efforts to identify and remove criminal aliens and combat drop houses. This has been a multi-year investigation, of which we expect the results to be presented this summer.

This is also why last month I introduced a bill with Republican Rep. Dana Rohrbacher of California to help secure our border. H.R. 5357, The Deploy National Guard Troops to the Border Act, would immediately deploy a minimum of an additional 3,000 National Guard troops to Arizona's border.

The National Guard has successfully assisted with border security in the past. Operation Jump Start, which concluded its mission in 2008 proved remarkably effective. Border-wide, the National Guard helped seize more than 1,080 vehicles used to transport drugs and/or illegal immigrants, more than 300,600 pounds of marijuana, and 5,060 pounds of cocaine.

I thought the National Guard was drawn down too quickly in 2008 and urged President Bush to extend the deployment of National Guard troops – to no avail. At the time, I offered legislation at the time to stop the draw down from happening, but it was defeated. I’ve also urged President Obama on multiple occasions to send additional National Guard troops to the border and teamed up with Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray of California last year to secure millions of dollars in additional funding for security improvements at the border.

While I welcome the President’s recent announcement that he will be sending an additional 1,200 National Guard troops to the border, I believe we need much more. That is why I hope Congress will take the next step by passing our bill while working on a more comprehensive, permanent fix.

Arizonans should have their voices heard in this debate and recent action taken by the state reflects Arizonans’ ongoing frustration with the federal government’s failure to enact tough, realistic immigration reform. The situation cannot wait simply because this is an election year, while folks in Washington choose to play politics rather than provide solutions. This is an urgent threat to our national security, and I believe the federal government must act.

A broken and ineffectual immigration system is a burden Arizonans should not have to continue to bear alone.

Sincerely,

Harry

Mitchell's statement on the introduction of H.R. 5357 can be found here in the Congressional Record.

Huppenthal petitions challenged: I *love* being able to say "I told you so"

Yes, I'm a bad man, but I really enjoy it when something I more or less predicted (more than a year ago!) starts looking like it will come to pass.

From my post a from a year ago -

Hi. Your snarky (but oh-so-friendly and helpful) neighborhood liberal blogger and Democratic activist here. I don't normally write for you folks, but this one is for you.

Some of you have signed nominating petitions for one John Huppenthal for next year's race for State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

{snip}

Under the laws of Arizona and the rules from the Arizona Secretary of State, a candidate must form a committee (file paperwork with the state formally declaring the candidate's interest in a particular office).

From the Secretary of State's candidate handbook (page 29 of the .pdf) (emphasis mine) -

4. Statement of Organization OR $500 Threshold Exemption Statement.
A Statement of Organization registering the candidate’s campaign committee OR a $500 Threshold Exemption Statement must be filed before making any expenditures, accepting any contributions, distributing any campaign literature or circulating any petitions. If the candidate has an exploratory committee open at the time of filing, then the candidate, chairman and treasurer must file an amended Statement of Organization to change the committee to a candidate’s campaign committee.

So far, Huppenthal has only formed an "exploratory" committee - filer ID 201000065, formed and last amended on March 16, 2009. As such, any signatures he has collected to date are invalid.

So check out this AZ Republic story today -

John Huppenthal, a Republican state senator vying for his party's nomination as state superintendent of public instruction, is being challenged by the state Democratic Party on the basis that many of his 11,000 petition signatures were gathered before he had formally entered the race.

His case is scheduled for a June 18 hearing in Maricopa County Superior Court.

Yessss!

Now, there is no guarantee that the challenge will be successful - we *are* in Maricopa County, Arizona, where somedays it seems as if the principle of "the rule of law" has been replaced by the principle of "IOKIYAR*".

However, the law seems clear - he had to change his exploratory committee to a candidate campaign committee *before* collecting sigs. He amended his campaign paperwork on January 14; he submitted his petitions on January 20.

I'm guessing that he didn't collect 11K sigs in 6 days.

Anyway, the complete list of challenges received by the Secretary of State's office is here; the current list of withdrawn candidates is here.

*IOKIYAR = "It's OK If You're A Republican

Later...

Candidates dropping already

Tomorrow (June 10) is the last day to file challenges to try to remove candidates from the August ballot, but candidates are already being knocked off or simply withdrawing to avoid the embarrassment of being removed.

In Maricopa County -

- Democrat Israel Correa has withdrawn from the race for Justice of the Peace in the Downtown Justice Precinct, leaving Democrats Jeff Farias and Armando Gandarilla (incumbent) as the only two candidates.

- Democrat Bruce McDougall has withdrawn from the Manistee JP race, leaving incumbent Republican Gary Handley as the sole candidate on either side of the ballot.

- Democrat Jeffrey Brown has been removed from the ballot due to a challenge in the race for Encanto Constable, leaving Democrat Maria Ligocki-Russell as the only candidate on the ballot.

In state-level offices -

- Republican candidate for governor John Munger (he of the low single digit support in recent polling) withdrew a week ago because he said that he felt that he couldn't outspend Clean Elections candidates who would receive matching funds. Funny, but he didn't jump back in after the Roberts Supreme Court stopped payment of matching funds for this cycle.

- Democrat Martha Garcia withdrew as a candidate for the LD13 State Senate seat because her petitions weren't going to stand up to a challenge. That leaves former State Rep. Steve Gallardo as the only candidate.

- Republican Wyatt Brooks has withdrawn as a candidate for LD3 House. I couldn't find a reason listed anywhere, but it could be related to the fact that while his campaign organized with a Kingman address (in LD3), the SOS' website now has shows an address of a P.O. box in Hualapai (in LD2, or maybe LD1, but almost definitely not LD3). His withdrawal leaves three candidates in the race, all Republicans - Ray Cullison II, Doris Goodale, and Nancy McLain. Goodale and McLain are incumbents.

In "getting into the race, sort of" news, a few folks have declared their write-in candidacies (primary here, general election here) -

- William Koller of Tucson filed for the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate

- Richard Grayson of Apache Junction has filed as a Green for the Congressional seat currently held by Republican Jeff Flake in CD6. As no other Green candidates have yet filed for the seat, Grayson needs 221 votes in August's primary to qualify for the general election ballot (221 is the number of sigs he would have needed to appear on the primary ballot)

- Sydney Dudikoff of Tucson has filed as a general election candidate for U.S. Senate

As of this writing, the only non-legislative originated ballot question to qualify is the Medical Marijuana Act. Other citizen-originated questions have until July 1 to submit their petitions, so that list may grow (though that seems unlikely at this point.)

Later...

Republican candidate for Governor proposes concentration camps for undocumented immigrants

No word if he wants to put "Work will set you free" above the entrance to his proposed facilities...

From AZCentral.com -

State treasurer and gubernatorial candidate Dean Martin is calling for the immediate deployment of National Guard troops to the border at Arizona's expense.

He's also calling for a statewide "tent city" jail modeled after Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail in Maricopa County to house arrested illegal immigrants at low cost.

Martin has been an also-ran in the attention department during his campaign, getting lost in the shadows of Jan Brewer's "incumbent Governor" pulpit and "Buz" Mills' TV ads funded by his own deep pockets, so Martin has been looking for some way to gain attention.

This proposal is guaranteed to get him some, though he may not like the kind of attention he receives.

Ignorance and apathy: not just for Arizona any more

...though there *is* hope for Arizona, dim though it may be...

And this is *not* a diatribe on SB1070, though with that title, it certainly could be...

From the Los Angeles Times -

Quick, don't Google, just answer: Who represents you in state government?

This is the question I roamed about asking at a party in my diverse and politically progressive neighborhood of Venice. The room was filled with people who worry openly about the water they drink, the fuel in their cars, the contents of their compost. Some of them had canvassed for Barack Obama or written checks to his campaign. Others were busy trying to overturn Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot initiative that banned gay marriage in California. They were unanimously baffled by what's happening in Arizona, where Gov. Jan Brewer recently signed a bill requiring "suspicious" people to prove their citizenship if stopped by police.

The author, an environmental author and activist, was shocked to find that no one in her group of activists could answer that question.

The author's mistake was surveying people who were only interested in "big" issues, not the nitty-gritty of local races.

As someone who is an activist and has had many discussions with friends and neighbors, I can state unequivocally that most people have no clue about state politics, their legislative representatives (both state and federal), and candidates for the job. Most can name the president and maybe the governor, but the farther down the political org chart the elected official is, the less likely that the typical resident is going to know who the elected official is, or what he or she does.

Nor is that phenomenon limited to the progressive community mentioned in the LA Times piece.

Two years ago, while attending a community meeting, I struck up a conversation with a local couple, a pair of long-time elected precinct committeepersons for the Republican Party, people who had done much the same thing (walking, talking, calling friends and neighbors) as I have (only for the wrong party :) ).

In short, they were the epitome of the "local activist".

Yet even they couldn't name the six ballot-qualified candidates for the R nomination in the CD5 race.

*I* could (Schweikert, Bitter Smith, Ogsbury, Anderson, Gentry, and Knaperek, and I still can recite that list from memory), but I'm a blogger - I write about this stuff.

Of course, even I'm not perfect in this regard. Until Ed Hermes, a friend of mine, ran for Maricopa County Supervisor in 2008, I couldn't name my representative on the Board of Supes (Fulton Brock. Hiss, Boo. :) ).

The supes rarely address issues that I care about, so I didn't pay attention to them.

Historically, this tendency toward not knowing or caring about elected officials or candidates has favored Republicans in Arizona. With a decided advantage in voter registration totals, and a tendency for self-identified Republicans to blindly vote for any candidate listed as a Republican, ignorance and apathy has led to the election of some supremely unqualified candidates.

This year, that may change (at least, I hope it does).

People are angry over the incredibly poor job that the current crop of state-level elected officials have done at managing the state. The SB1070/immigration issue may have distracted a lot of folks for the time being, but the fundamental dissatisfaction with the performance of Arizona's legislature and statewide officials remains both deep and profound.

On top of that, the number of independent voters in Arizona has risen compared to the percentage of voters who identify a party preference (less than 25% in 2004 compared to more than 30% as of last month). These are folks who, for the most part, don't care about a candidate's partisan affiliation.

The utter incompetence and complete unprofessionalism of the legislature and Jan Brewer has broken through the normal apathy - people care about the job their elected officials are doing.

Now the task is to break through the normal ignorance, to let people know who their elected officials are and the part that each of them played in steering Arizona's ship of state into the rocky shoals of fiscal insolvency and societal ridicule.

...Later...

The "SB1070 supporters = Nazis" analogy is a strong one, but not an overdone one

Not by a long shot...

Many of the more vocal opponents of Russell Pearce's SB1070 (the "show me your papers" law) have likened him, Governor Jan Brewer, and the other supporters of the law to the Nazis.

Brewer finds this analogy so offensive that it caused her to stick her foot in her mouth, inflating her father's record of service during WW2 in order to bask in some reflected Nazi-fighting glow.
The analogy is such a powerful one that even Pearce himself has taken to "disavowing" any connections to white supremacists or Neo-Nazis. Of course, given his history of anti-immigrant rhetoric (Operation Wetback, anyone?), nativist legislation (SB1070 and many, many, more), and "curious" campaign activities (like emails touting a white separatist website), Pearce's protestations seem more pro forma than substantive.

Even Jewish commentators have objected to the analogy, mostly expressing the idea that the "Nazi" analogy and related rhetoric is overheated in this case and only serves to minimize the evil of the Nazis and the Holocaust.

While I understand the commentators' reluctance to give credence to the analogy (and also why Pearce and Brewer don't want to be equated to the greatest evil of the 20th, and perhaps any other, Century), it fits.

The Nazis started slowly, and legislatively, enacting a series of laws meant to demonize and isolate Jews and other "non-Aryans" from German society, economically, legally, and socially.

To whip up public support for the ever-stronger anti-semitic laws, the Nazis ratcheted up their rhetoric, blaming Jews for all that ailed Germany in the post-WWI era, economically, socially, and intellectually.

There were laws to remove Jews from Germany's civil service, restrict the number of "non-Aryans" in schools (both as students and as professors), forbid Jewish physicians from treating non-Jewish patients, and more, culminating in laws revoking the citizenship of Jews.

And that was just the start, when the Nazis were still attempting to put a civil face (of sorts) on their pogrom.

Here in 21st Century Arizona, the state's nativists, led by Russell Pearce and Jan Brewer (and Joe Arpaio and Tom Horne and Colette Rosati and Ron Gould and so many others), have trod a similar path, starting with laws restricting, underfunding, or even defunding English Language Learner classes in AZ's public schools, blocking the poor from taking advantage of public services and benefits unless they prove their U.S. citizenship first, banning ethnic studies courses, removing teachers with accents from classes, and the now-infamous SB1070 "show me your papers" law.

Now Pearce wants to follow up his recent successes with moves to deny citizenship to babies born to undocumented immigrant parents and to force the children of non-citizen parents to pay tuition to attend Arizona's public schools.

Combine that with an escalating anti-immigrant (mostly anti-Hispanic immigrant) rhetoric (like blaming undocumented immigrants for crime in Arizona, even though actual statistics show that those claims are false), such as that which resulted in demands that the faces in a mural at a school in Prescott Valley be lightened because they weren't white enough.

Update: During the writing of this piece, news started hitting the internet that the decision to force the artist to lighten the faces has been reversed. Apparently, being the epicenter of worldwide outrage over a blatantly bigoted decision was too much for the powers-that-be in Prescott. (Further background from Prescott eNews here)

The laws, proposed and enacted, and the rhetoric both demonize and isolate Arizona's immigrant community, just as the Nazis' Nuremburg and eugenics laws did more than seven decades ago.

I understand the reluctance of many observers to accept the Nazi/SB1070 analogy - no one wants to believe that their friends and neighbors (or even themselves) are capable of great evil.

And to be sure, Arizona's nativists haven't racked up the body count the way that Germany's Nazis did.

Yet.

One should remember that the Nazis were in power for more than a decade before their "Final Solution" of assembly-line efficient genocide was fully up to speed; Jan Brewer ascended to the Governor's office less than a year-and-a-half ago.

And one should not confuse "lack of time" with "lack of desire."

Services set for Councilman Tony Nelssen

From the City of Scottsdale -

Memorial services to be held for Councilman Tony Nelssen

Memorial services for Councilman Tony Nelssen will begin at 9 a.m. Tuesday, June 8, at WestWorld’s Equidome, 16601 N. Pima Road.

Councilman Nelssen passed away May 26 at his home after battling cancer.

For safety purposes, those attending are being asked to dress appropriately. Temperatures are expected to exceed 110 degrees on Tuesday, and the Equidome is a shaded, outdoor, dirt-floored structure that will be cooled by swamp. If comfortable, those attending can honor Councilman Nelssen’s memory by dressing in Western attire.

Access WestWorld by either Bell or Pima roads. Follow the signs to the Equidome. Parking, including handicapped, will be available in the “H” lot. Attendees may then enter the Equidome’s west side for the services.

The program will include the reading of a poem written by Bob Frost, a former city employee and Parks and Recreation Commissioner. Eulogies will be given by Mayor
W.J. “Jim” Lane, Councilman Bob Littlefield, family friends Amy Ganley and John Washington, and Nelssen’s children, Hannah and Ian.

On Tuesday, the Scottsdale City Council will consider possible processes for filling the open seat on the Council, including the possibility of simply appointing Mayor Jim Lane's nominee Marg Nelssen, Tony Nelssen's wife. AZ Republic coverage here. Full Council agenda here.

Cliche time: Politics makes strange bedfellows

Earlier today, John McCain brought his Senate reelection campaign, and his newest best buddy Mitt Romney, to Mesa.

Romney was effusive in his praise for McCain today, which may have surprise long-time (and not-so-long-time) observers who remember the 2008 presidential campaign.

Some of those observers are at the DNC, and they put this together -

Apparently, being a Republican hasn't immunized Jan Brewer from "foot-in-mouth" disease

From the AZ Republic -

Gov. Jan Brewer, who has been the subject of some unflattering criticism since signing Senate Bill 1070 into law on April 23, appears to have misspoken about the death of her father and his war service in a recent interview with The Arizona Republic.

Her comments have led some media outlets and political opponents to speculate that she lied about her father's service in World War II, or deliberately inflated it — an allegation her office is denying.

In The Republic interview, Brewer talks about how hurt she has been by remarks that have likened her to a Nazi, and comments that her action on the state's tough new immigration law makes her akin to “Hitler's daughter.”

In the interview, she says the criticism has been especially painful because her father, Wilford Drinkwine died trying to fight the Nazis.

"The Nazi comments...they are awful," she told The Republic. "Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that...It hurts. It's ugliness beyond anything I've ever experienced."

There's just a couple of problems with those last two sentences, as the Rep piece goes on to point out - Brewer's father didn't actually serve in Europe, he worked in a defense plant in Nevada, nor did he die in that service. To be fair, her father died because of lung disease that could have had its roots in the working conditions in that plant. Still, that isn't dying while "fighting the Nazi regime in Germany."

Still waiting for the R echo chamber to excoriate Brewer the same way they did the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Connecticut when he overstated his service record...

BTW - Nothing in this post is meant to minimize the contributions that Mr. Drinkwine and millions of others made to the effort to defeat the Nazis. In their own way, they were just as vital to the war effort as were the soldiers, sailors, and marines who did the actual fighting.

Without the munitions, equipment, and supplies that Drinkwine and all of those others made (including my grandfather, who worked in the Navy yard in Boston during WW2), the servicemen on the line wouldn't have had anything to fight with.

However vital though, "working in a defense plant" is not the same as "serving in Europe."

Munger out: and the weeding out begins

From the Tucson Citizen -

(PHOENIX, AZ) June 1, 2010 – Republican Gubernatorial candidate John Munger released the following statement today:

“The Supreme Court’s decision to leave in place the “matching funds” provision of Arizona’s so-called Clean Elections law presents an insurmountable obstacle to my
campaign for Governor. As I have previously stated publicly and in legal
filings, these dollar-for-dollar taxpayer matching funds create an unequal playing field by discouraging financial contributions to traditionally-funded candidates.

Now, the reccnt court ruling upholding the matching funds provision of Clean Elections *may* have played a part in Munger's withdrawal, but that may just be a convenient excuse that will be swallowed whole by the average Republican.

More likely, he realized that he isn't making any headway among Republican primary voters, and isn't in a position to do so - Jan Brewer may be an unelected incumbent, but she is still the incumbent with an incumbent's stage and as much money as Munger has, it's nothing compared to what Buz Mills has spent and is willing to spend.

Look for few, if any, other significant withdrawals at this point. For most of the candidates, the heavy lifting part of the primary campaign, getting organized enough to gather the sigs to get on the ballot, is over. Perhaps in the U.S. Senate races, where Deakin (R) is getting lost among the clutter of the McCain/Hayworth tiff, and one of the four Ds may fall off after a few weeks of trying to make headway (or maybe not, I'm not sure).

Encouraging the use of fireworks in Arizona: Another chapter in Republican legislative brilliance

Earlier this year, the Arizona legislature passed and Jan Brewer signed HB2246, a measure that deregulated "consumer fireworks" (legislative fact sheet on the bill, including a list of consumer fireworks, here). Under limited circumstances, individual municipalities and counties can create some regulations within their jurisdictions.

However, at this point in time, none have done so.

That may change after events on Monday.

From the Arizona Republic -

Two homes were damaged Monday by a brush fire sparked by firecrackers. There were no injuries, but a dog died in the incident, said Deputy Chief Fire Marshall Jim Ford, of the Scottsdale Fire Department.

Anybody want to start a pool predicting how high the body count/acres burned totals will get before the lege takes another reexamines the wisdom of deregulating fireworks in a state so totally prone to wildfires?

My predictions: body count between 20 and 25, and acres burned between 10,000 and 20,000.

Familiar names running for unfamiliar offices

Every election cycle, a lot of attention is paid to elected officials attempting to move up a level.

Look at the amount of coverage that Harry Mitchell and Gabrielle Giffords received during their moves from the state lege to the U.S. Congress in 2006, or that Ann Kirkpatrick received while making the same move in 2008. Even this year, some of the most covered candidates are those like Jonathan Paton, Pam Gorman, Jim Waring, and Sam Crump, all of whom are attempting the same move. In addition, due to term limits (both in the lege and in statewide offices), a number of legislators (and other "big names" politically) are trying to move to statewide offices - Verschoor, Huppenthal, Leff, Thomas, Lujan, Garcia and more.

Perhaps lost in the clutter this year is the number of legislators looking to step "down" a level (though to be fair, many observers think that the AZ lege is so low, any move away from it is a step "up").

- State Sen. Jay Tibshraeny (R) is running for mayor of Chandler

- Rep. Ben Miranda (D) (or someone with the same name at the same address) is running for constable in the South Mountain Justice Precinct

- former State Rep. Mark Anderson (R) is running for Justice of the Peace in West Mesa

- State Sen. Meg Burton Cahill (D) is running for Justice of the Peace in the University Lakes justice precinct (aka - East Tempe)

- State Sen. Ken Cheuvront (D) is running for Justice of the Peace in the Encanto Justice Precinct

- Radio and internet talk show host Jeff Farias is running for Justice of the Peace in the Downtown Justice Precinct

- And in a blast from the recent past (non-lege genus), Daniel Washburn, the pro-tem Justice of the Peace who gave John Huppenthal, then a state senator and now a candidate for state superintendent of public instruction, a complete walk on political sign tampering and misdemeanor theft charges is running for a Superior Court judge position in Pinal County. Reading his campaign finance reports should be interesting. Fun, even, especially if the name "Huppenthal" (or anyone affiliated with Huppenthal) appears on his list of contributors.

This should be an interesting year with some interesting stories, and not just in the high profile races. Stay tuned...

Most candidate status info courtesy the unofficial list of candidates published by the Maricopa County Recorder's Office; more info gathered from the list of candidates published by the Pinal County Recorder's Office. Many (but not all) of the other counties in Arizona have similar lists up, but I didn't notice any really familiar names on those.

Supporters of SB1070 showing their true colors

From AZFamily.com -

Rallies were held for supporters on both sides of Arizona's immigration law on Saturday. The "National Day of Action against SB 1070" rally took place in downtown Phoenix Saturday morning. And the "Stand with Arizona" pro-SB 1070 rally was held at Tempe's Diablo Stadium Saturday evening.

Both events were peacful, passionate gatherings of like-minded individuals in support of their respective positions. However, a few supporters of Arizona's new immigration law were also on-hand at the anti-SB 1070 rally.

Two men carrying loaded weapons and waiving a confederate flag said they were there to support SB 1070. One man was carrying a loaded shotgun and wearing a White People's Party shirt. The other said he was a big fan of Hitler, calling him a "great White civil rights leader."

The video at the story link shows that the vocal fan of Hitler quoted in the story is someone familiar most readers of this blog - J.T. Ready, neo-Nazi and friend of the author of SB1070, Russell Pearce.

The coming week...

As usual, all info gathered from the websites of the relevent political bodies/agencies, except where noted, and subject to change without notice.

...At the federal level, both the U.S. House and Senate are on a break. They'll be back in session next week.

...Back here in Arizona...


- The Arizona Corporation Commission doesn't have any regular meetings scheduled, however they will be travelling to gather public comment on specific issues.

-- On Wednesday at 1 p.m., they will be holding a special meeting in Tucson to solicit public comments on line extension policies for Arizona utilities.

-- Later on Wednesday, they will hold two public meetings in Nogales. The first will start at 6 p.m. and will concern Rio Rico Utilities rates; the second is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. and will concern Valle Verde Water Company rates.

-- The ACC's hearing schedule is here. Most of this week's hearing activity involves Arizona American Water (a name near and not-so-dear to Scottsdale readers :) ).


- The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors will meet on Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. It's a special meeting with one topic - a settlement with the Department of Labor over MCSO's forcing detention officers to work unpaid overtime. AZ Republic coverage of the matter here.


- The Board of Directors of the Central Arizona Project will have a busy week.

-- On Tuesday at 1 p.m., there will be a meeting of the Project ADD Water group.

-- On Thursday at 9 a.m., the Board's Public Policy Committee will meet.

-- After the committee meeting, the full Board with hold a regular meeting. The highlights of this meeting will be the setting of property tax and service rates.


- The Tempe City Council isn't meeting this week; the Council Calendar of events is here.


- The Scottsdale City Council also isn't meeting this week; the City of Scottsdale's Community Meeting Notice is here.

Note: When memorial service arrangements for late Councilman Tony Nelssen are announced, an update will be posted.


Not meeting this week: Citizens Clean Elections Commission, Governing Board of the Maricopa County Community College District, Board of Directors of the Maricopa Integrated Health System, Arizona Board of Regents