Score a triumph for redistricting a little more than a half-year ahead of the November elections. The Payson Roundup reports that Republican state Senator Sylvia Allen has turned yellower than an egg-sucking cur at the prospect of running in the newly formed Legislative District 6, where a recent poll showed her with a mere 22 percent approval rating, the lowest of legislators surveyed.
Seems Allen's decided to take some time off from law-makin' to spend more precious moments with the kinfolk.
"When you're a rural legislator, you have to drive many hours. If I was taking care of constituent matters, I was just gone a lot," Allen told the Roundup. "It's a sacrifice for my husband, for my children, for my grandchildren."
Allen's supposed longing for familial bonding is one of the oldest excuses in the political playbook. Actually, it's a yolk-colored stripe down the back that's given Allen second thoughts about running for re-election .
See, Allen is currently the state Senator from the solidly GOP Legislative District 5, but she would have to run in the new LD 6 to keep her seat.
The new district includes the the ever-crunchy hippie heaven of Flagstaff. And that's had Democratic state Representative Tom Chabin, whose running for Senate from LD 6, salivating at the thought of sparring with the wingnutty Allen in a general election.
With the prospect of fellow GOPers gunning for her in a Republican primary, and then having Chabin to face if she survived that first round, it's obvious Allen saw the writing on the proverbial wall. Instead of admitting her own lack of intestinal fortitude, she went with the line about playing paddy-cake with the grandkids.
But the mad tinfoil-hatter hasn't given up on public life altogether. She explained to the Roundup that she's interested in a public office closer to home: a seat on the Navajo County Board of Supervisors.
Which, if it keeps her away from the Capitol, is fine by me.
As you may recall, Allen is known for her pronouncement that the earth is only 6,000 years old, for her stalwart support of recalled state Senate President Russell Pearce, for inviting racist anti-Semite Glenn Spencer to testify before her Senate Border Security, Federalism and States' Sovereignty Committee, and for backing a screwy proposal to fund an armed state militia of toothless hillbillies to chase after Mexicans. This last one, over the objections of Major General Hugo Salazar, Adjutant General of the Arizona National Guard.
So, her departure from the Legislature should leave the place at least one nut saner. Hopefully, her exit stage right is an augur of things to come.
Indeed, the new political map in this state may sweep some of Allen's kooky, far right colleagues from office and usher in the end of the Republican supermajority.
Of course, this means I won't have Allen to kick around anymore in print. But if I ever miss her, I can always find her on YouTube, where her stupidity lives on ad nauseam.
Farewell, Sylvia! Whenever I spy South Park school bus driver Miss Crabtree on the boob tube, this scribe will think, not so fondly, of you.
