Republican candidate for state Senate Robert Worsley, a conservative Mesa entrepreneur with a track record of success in the private sector (unlike his government-mooching opponent in Legislative District 25, ex-state Senate President Russell Pearce, natch) is speaking out in opposition to Pearce’s boycott against local businesses that advertise with New…
Anyone who knows award-winning Phoenix journalist Valeria Fernandez knows that for four years now she and her collaborator, filmmaker Dan DeVivo, have been working on a documentary about Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s reign of terror and error in Maricopa County, a film ultimately titled Two Americans.Fernandez and DeVivo’s film is finally…
Two weeks ago, I reported on a hearing before U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow in the ACLU’s big racial-profiling lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Melendres v. Arpaio. During that hearing, Snow scheduled the seven-day trial to begin on July 19.After the hearing, outside the Sandra Day O’Connor U.S…
According to a recent item in the Washington Post’s Election 2012 Blog, recalled state Senate President Russell Pearce has endorsed Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential primary, more than a month after Romney won Sand Land’s GOP contest. As a result, Romney immediately called a press conference and conceded the general election…
Know what the best part of this new poll released by Arizona Working Families is? The lowest ranked legislator of those mentioned in the survey was none other than crackpot Republican state Senator Sylvia Allen.Allen, who currently represents Legislative District 5, scored a measly 22 percent favorable rating in the…
Mike Stauffer, looking to retire Arpaio this fallRecently, Phoenix videographer Dennis Gilman and I interviewed the two men who want to put Sheriff Joe Arpaio out to pasture come November: Democratic candidate and former Phoenix Police Department Sergeant Paul Penzone, and Scottsdale Police Department Lieutenant Mike Stauffer, who’s running as…
Funny how some conservatives are always against boycotts affecting Arizona businesses, unless they’re the ones doing the boycotting. I say this as the nativist hate group Ban Amnesty Now fires up its promised boycott of New Times’ advertisers, with shrill messages on BAN’s website and Facebook page. Weirdly, the brain surgeons…
When a man is so duplicitous as to mislead others about his faith, what does it say about his character? The question is more complicated in the case of former state Senate President Russell Pearce, because he’s been caught fibbing about his religion before, during his failed effort to win…
Phoenix attorney and ex-Arizona Democratic Party Chairman Don Bivens removed himself from the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate today, leaving the way clear for former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona to snag the Dems’ nod for the post.In a statement to the press, Bivens claimed that he was taking a…
Please see update below.Scottsdale Police Lieutenant and candidate for Maricopa County sheriff Mike Stauffer’s Twitter audience recently jumped from around 600 followers to more than 2,600 followers, thanks to a number of questionable accounts.Many of the new accounts seem fake, lack photos, and/or have zero or few Tweets. In some…
It’s pretty easy for a scribbler in this town to know when you’ve drawn blood from local hypocrites: Those skewered squeal like hogs being boiled alive in Karo syrup.Recalled ex-state Senate President Russell Pearce is no exception, despite his tough-guy pose. Make that double for his mini-me enabler Sean McCaffrey,…
Penzone: Looking to put ol’ man Arpaio out to pastureI’ve been wanting to interview Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s two rivals in this year’s general election for a while now. So recently, Phoenix videographer Dennis Gilman and I met separately with former Phoenix Police Department Sergeant Paul Penzone and Scottsdale Police Lieutenant…
More than four years after it was first filed, and more than three years since the American Civil Liberties Union lodged its amended complaint in the case, the big racial profiling lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio — Melendres v. Arpaio — will finally go to trial this summer. That is, if…
You’d think a practicing lawyer, former president of the Arizona Board of Regents, and erstwhile GOP gubernatorial candidate would possess a lick of sense. But Tucson attorney John Munger is proof positive that possession of a swell resume is no guarantee of intelligence.Munger is the fella who recently threatened legal…
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu is a practiced political chameleon, a public shape-shifter who changes allegiances and beliefs like most men change socks. His best-known transformation was into an immigration hard-liner and Fox News pinup boy, a switch from his days as the head of the Chandler Police Union, when…
The most interesting item to drop from the lips of recalled state Senate President Russell Pearce at Mesa’s Red Mountain Tea Party meeting on Monday was not the fact that he’s running for state Senate in Legislative District 25. Rather, it was something Pearce said to me as I buttonholed him…
Though he can’t boast much in the way of contributions, Scottsdale Police Lieutenant and sheriff’s office hopeful Mike Stauffer may have earned his place on the November general election ballot as an Independent.According to a press release issued today by the Stauffer camp, which you can read below, Stauffer has…
Recalled state Senate President Russell Pearce has just encountered his first major obstacle in his revenge campaign for state Senate from Legislative District 25: Republican businessman Robert Worsley.Today, the wealthy Mesa executive has announced that he’ll be Pearce’s rival in the Republican primary for LD 25, effectively upstaging Pearce’s planned announcement…
Former Arizona Democratic Party Chair Don Bivens will not go gently into that good night, like he should.Rather, Bivens seems hell-bent on an ugly contest in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate this year. Already, he’s going negative on former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, the guy President Barack Obama and…
Republicans. I know some of them are sane here in Sand Land, but you wouldn’t know it by their wingnutty hijinks in the state Legislature this year, where they’ve placed a birther-bill, a late-term abortion ban and a state-funded border militia ahead of doing anything to aid the economy, bring…
Right-wing attempts to legitimize nativist border wacko Glenn Spencer persist in the strangest fashion.Today, the conservative website Right Side News reported on a letter from former GOP gubernatorial candidate John Munger to Luis Heredia, Executive Director of the Arizona Democratic Party, demanding that Heredia issue a “letter of retraction” concerning statements…
Hupp goes all Hannibal on the MAS crowd, 6:34 onWhat I like about Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal is his consistency. You know when he opens his mouth, he’s bound to say something stupid. It’s just a matter of how stupid.His latest round of revelatory idiocies — at…
