Recall of an Iconic Politician

History was made the other day in Arizona. A Republican-led citizen group turned in a record setting 18,315 signatures to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office in a recall petition with the infamous Arizona State Senate President Russell Pearce targeted for removal from office.
   The 18,315 is over double the 7,756 signatures required by law for a recall election.
   Arizona’s Secretary of State’s (SOS) office has ten days to review the signatures and get them over to the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office for verification. The recorder then has 60 days to verify the signatures. If the required signatures are verified, the SOS will inform Pearce he must resign or face recall, his choice.
   Governor Jan Brewer will have 15 days after these procedures and potential legal challenges to make the official call for an election. The potential election can occur in November of this year or March of 1012.
   The petition sponsoring group has carefully scrubbed the signatures making an election inevitable, come November or March.
   Former congressman and failed senate candidate, a former football player who obviously played without a helmet, J.D, Hayworth is blasting e-mails to ultra-conservative people to raise funds for the upcoming recall election. Hayworth defines Pearce’s opponents as “open border, pro-Amnesty mafia” for “illegals” and traitors to America.
   Joining him is Senator Pearce himself who has written (on State stationary and state time) the new Arizona Attorney General challenging existing Arizona law that forbids union or corporate funds from being used in this potential election. Pearce wants to raise money from corporations and unions, specifically the police officers union and from private prison companies that already own Pearce.
   Despite the pig-like squealing of Pearce and Hayworth, the recall petition pulled in more signatures than the total number of votes Pearce received in his last election (17,552). So… Watch out Pearce, the “Bells toll for thee.”
   While Arizona burns and people flee their threatened homes, State Senate President Pearce took the time to write a five page letter to the Attorney General begging to have settled and long-standing Arizona law that prohibits union and corporate donations to campaigns like this set aside so he can rake in money that is currently illegal.
   Pearce wrote the letter on his official State Senate letterhead, meaning that he’s pimping for his anti-recall group on the people’s dime.
   The letter’s two questions on contributions and whether or not the recall group violated a law that requires a report when the first $10,000 is raised have already been answered by the Secretary of State’s office.
   Both matters have been addressed by (Republican) State Elections Director Amy Bjelland who, according to the Phoenix New Times, “has informed the attorney for Citizens Who Oppose the Pearce Recall that CBA did not violate state statute, and that Pearce’s group cannot take corporate or union dough.”
   New Times, “Not that Pearce actually typed or dictated this letter himself. He’s not a lawyer, and he’s not that smart, to be blunt. A russet potato has a higher IQ.”
   Why is it important that a man who can’t match a “russet potato” in “IQ” be recalled by Arizona voters? It is important because Pearce has allowed himself to be used by the fanatic Fascists of the racist and nativist groups founded and funded by America’s premier racist, Dr. John Tanton and his hand-chosen lawyer, Kris Kobach, newly elected Kansas Secretary of State.
   Tanton-financed Kobach has authored the infamous and enjoined Arizona SB1070 and the same money was used to support Pearce in his sponsorship of that bill that lasted twelve-seconds in federal court. The money flow ended, however, when the U.S. Government, ACLU and private citizens filed seven lawsuits against the law before it became law.
   Kobach and his lawyer associates have been paid millions of dollars to defend their laws in court and they have lost even as they spent the millions of dollars on legal corpses.
   It is that very source of money that Senator Russell Pearce insists on tapping to beat back the recall, profoundly Fascist money with roots in the element of America that bleeds at the idea of a Mexican, a Mexican American, or the very people who Pearce sees working in the agricultural fields surrounding his hometown of Mesa, Arizona.
   The people of Arizona Senate District 18 that elected Mormon Pearce with 17, 552 votes have turned against Pearce with the recall petition. Will they vote to throw him out of the Senate?
   Wouldn’t a “card check” program like unions want be useful here where more people (mostly Mormons and Republicans) than voted for Pearce have demanded a recall of this senator who fiddles while Arizona burns. Be gone, Pearce, be gone.

Recall of an Iconic Politician

Tags