Ruben Gallego's campaign is touting an endorsement from Jayme Valenzuela, mayor of Superior -- and making sure to note that that's Mary Rose Wilcox's hometown.
Gallego and Wilcox both are running for Arizona's 7th Congressional District seat.
Valenzuela says Gallego "has a record of honest and true public service we can trust."
Camp Gallego may be proud of what it perceives as a political "gotcha" to Wilcox, but given Valenzuela's personal and political history, it's hardly anything to get excited about -- especially when you've made fighting for immigrants' rights and immigration reform a campaign priority.
See also: -Babeu's "Elite" Staff Overcomes Bad Behavior with Loyalty -Republican Former Gov. Fife Symington Hosted Fundraiser for Gallego -Battle Royale: Controversial Mary Rose Wilcox Is in the Political Fight of Her Life
Valenzuela is a loyalist to anti-immigrant Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, and even played a role in helping Babeu, a Massachusetts transplant, get elected into Arizona politics.
We have a call into Gallego's campaign for comment.
A brief recap on Babeu: He's the border hawk who came under fire for tipping off protestors about a busload of immigrant children who were supposedly going to be housed in an Eloy facility.
He's the right-winger with Congressional aspirations whose campaign fell apart after New Times revealed he e-mailed selfies in his underwear and of his erect penis to anonymous people and posted his penis size and his preference in sexual positions on a hook-up site for gay men.
He's the politician who, despite his very public anti-immigrant stance, was involved in a sexual relationship with a Mexican national. Babeu hired that man, Jose Orozco, to work on his campaign and then, when their relationship fell apart, Orozco alleged that Babeu threatened to deport him if he revealed the sheriff's sexual orientation.
Valenzuela publicly supported Babeu, a Republican, when he was running for sheriff in 2008. Valenzuela also ran for sheriff that year, but lost his bid in the Democratic primary.
For the support, Babeu handsomely repaid Valenzuela with a $73,257 a year job overseeing contracts for supplies and services at the Pinal County jails. At his immediately previous job, Valenzuela was a meter reader for Arizona Public Service making $34,000 a year.
What makes it worse is that Valenzuela is also a former Pinal County sheriff's deputy who was listed as ineligible to be rehired by the county because his job performance was so poor. And, his employment track record was so questionable that even his own hometown police agency -- the Superior Police Department -- refused to hire him.
