She writes: "There were plenty of other examples of people signing the petition with Latin names who could barely print, let alone sign, claiming a birthplace of Mexico, Guatemala, or 'not provided.'
"Many stated their occupations as 'laborer' or, in some instances, as 'laborers.'"
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Will Linda Bentley's bogus allegations save this guy? Not a chance.
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To be fair, Bentley does mention one — count him, one — signer of the petition with an Anglo last name. This guy's sin? According to Bentley, he misspelled his last name.
To this point, Bentley offered the following clueless passage:
"One man signed and printed his last name 'Peterson' quite legibly. Due to Peterson being somewhat of a common name, it made more sense to look him up by address.
"However, the address revealed the registration of a man whose last name was spelled 'Pederson.'"
Wow, that's some real Sherlock Holmes-style sleuthing there, Linda. If they start prosecuting people for spelling errors, about 99 percent of the population will wind up behind bars. All but preteen winners of spelling bees.
The claim's so lame that I was almost embarrassed to ask Osborne about this one. But due diligence gave me no choice, so I e-mailed Osborne with the query.
"[I] do not have enough info to answer the question," she replied. "Do not have a Peterson/Pederson combination that I could locate. I looked at the article and found no first name. At any rate, we would match the signature and the printing style on his current and past registrations before making the determination."
Bentley smeared this fella, too. But curiously, she did not list his address, as she did with Lantigua.
I don't know enough about libel law to know whether Bentley and those who reprinted her trash are on the hook legally for it.
But Lantigua may not be the only one considering legal action. Sean McCaffrey's made some outrageous stand-alone accusations in BAN e-mail screeds about the recall's organizers. And these have prompted a response from Citizens for a Better Arizona.
Chad Snow, attorney and CBA chairman, fired off a letter last week to Pearce, McCaffrey, and Lisa Hauser, the legal attack schnauzer working on behalf of the pro-Pearce forces.
Snow wrote: "It is one thing to call us 'open borders extremists', 'socialists,' 'anarchists,' the 'open borders cartel,' 'mafia members,' 'thugs' and the like — petty name-calling, while unbecoming of a Senate president, is what we have come to expect from you.
"But when you start disseminating information accusing us of 'supporting massive voter fraud' and 'illegal' activities, you have crossed a line into defamation, which is recognized as a tort in the State of Arizona."
Because we enjoy freedom of speech in this country, as enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, there's a lot of leeway allowed when it comes to political discourse. And this is as it should be.
But Bentley has gone way too far. She even suggested in her article that Lantigua may have committed bigamy.
As this column went to press, I learned that this situation is even uglier than I first thought.
Based on Bentley's sorry reporting, Bentley's boss, Don Sorchych, editor and publisher of Sonoran News, wrote a June 22 editorial saying Lantigua was "likely an illegal."
He wrote: "Bentley found a Mexican woman who has voting rights under three different last names at the same home address. She is likely an illegal also, in which case she has no right to vote. If she is legal, she has a right to vote once, not three times."
Keep in mind that Osborne stated that Lantigua did nothing wrong. She did not double-vote, nor did she double-sign.
I called Lantigua back with Sorchych's claims. She was aghast.
"I've lived in Arizona for like the last 22, 23 years," she told me. "I went through the legal process. I became a permanent resident alien. I waited . . . [and] I became an American citizen."
Lantigua said she has a U.S. passport and works in a local bank. She confirmed that she is considering legal action against Sorchych's paper.
To which, I wish her Godspeed. Because there should be consequences for penning the bunk Bentley and Sorchych do on a regular basis.
