Comments (0) BEST BIGOT - 2007

Rusty Childress

The competition for Best Bigot was fierce. With the debate over illegal immigration raging, there were so many nominees: Sheriff Joe Arpaio, County Attorney Andy Thomas, Governor Janet Napolitano, State Representative Russell Pearce, white supremacist J.T. Ready. It was hard to ignore Arpaio's illegal immigrant hotline. Who can forget Thomas' novel idea of charging illegals with "conspiring" to smuggle themselves into the country (prosecutions be damned)? And Pearce has had a hard-on for Mexicans from way back. He's the one always drumming up legislation to try to keep them out, like the bill that his political ally Napolitano actually signed to prosecute businesses for hiring undocumented workers. Never mind that it won't work and, in the off chance it could, would cripple the economy of the state.

But the guy who gets the nod this year is Rusty Childress, Kia dealer and coddler of neo-Nazis like Ready. Childress hosted Ready at one of his Thursday-night hate confabs at his Kia dealership, when people who would have been attracted to the KKK in another era show up to blather about how much they hate Mexicans. And the political extremists at the meetings didn't end with Ready. Besides J.T., all but Thomas and Napolitano on the aforementioned list have showed up to entertain the rednecks at Childress Kia. It's Childress who's been the behind-the-scenes puppet-master of the anti-illegal-immigration movement here. And... he didn't have to do it to curry the political favor of the Gomers in the electorate, either. He did it because he's dedicated, apparently, to bigotry. He didn't even let the fact that he has no problem selling automobiles to Mexicans get in the way of his dedication to the cause. We say Rusty Childress is the bigot's bigot for 2007.