See also Mitt Romney's Arizona Problem: Randy Pullen vs. Shane Wikfors
What's going on with Shane Wikfors? The now former spokesman for the Arizona Republican Party?
"AZGOP Spox" used to be part of Wikfors twitter profile -- but now, it's gone. And up until mid-June, he was still being called a "spokesman for the Republican Party" and was officially its communications director.
We called the AZ GOP and were directed to Tim Sifert who said he was the communications director, and described Wikfors now as "an independent contractor."
Sifert said he'd get back to us with more details about when Wikfors' went from official spokesman to independent contractor. And he said he'd pass our messages along to Wikfors.
Did Wikfors get bumped from the party bus over his comments to Brahm Resnik on 12 News' Sunday Square Off in late June?
New Times Feathered Bastard wrote that during the show, which focused on President Obama's policy shift to temporarily stop deporting certain undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, the (then?) "state GOP spokesman and conservative blogger Shane Wikfors gave a shockingly sane response:
"This is a conversation that's not going to go away anytime soon," he said. "And it's a conversation the Republican Party has got to have at our national convention at Tampa in August."I think this party needs to re-evaluate its position on how we deal with people [who] are part of us, part of our community," he added.
Wikfors noted that what he said "went against the grain," but he averred that state party Chairman Tom Morrissey was of the same mind."
Not long after, former former state GOP chair Randy Pullen (and others) called for Wikfors' head on a platter.
Or, did he get bumped because he referred to criticism from a Republican activist and an Arizona Republic columnist, who both happen to be women, as a "bitch session."
(We all know a bitch session is just a bitch session. It doesn't automatically mean the women involved in the session are bitches. But Wikfors is apparently doing too much of his own thinking and it apparently hasn't been sitting well with the Republican Party.)
Or, was Wikfors booted as top mouthpiece because -- just today -- in a tweet directed to Alexis Tameron, who is managing Richard Carmona's campaign for U.S. Senate and happens to be Latina, Wikfors asks her "when was the last time you had to show papers @AlexisTameronAZ? How about when @CarmonaforAZ hired you? #azsen."
We're trying not to read too much into this ... but it is a ridiculous question on such an politically-charged topic.
Is he suggesting that as a Latina she should show them? Is he raising a question about her status? Would he be asking an Anglo woman the same thing?
Sifert tells New Times that Wikfors' tweet to Tameron "is not connected to the Arizona Republican Party."
And just when we thought that Wikfors was going to be bringing a level of sanity to the Republican Party.
