Mary Rose Wilcox says she'll announce plans on Monday to run for re-election as Maricopa County's District 5 Supervisor.
Name recognition shouldn't be a problem.
When voters decide which Supervisors to elect in 2012, (all five seats are up for grabs), it's a safe bet they'll know Wilcox is a senior member of a Board on which she's the only Democrat and she's immigrant-friendly.
They'll also likely know that she was indicted on multiple felony counts in 2009 -- and again in 2010 -- by a county prosecutor who was disbarred for securing those indictments... Sorry, we're getting of ourselves -- we're just predicting that Andrew Thomas will be disbarred before next November. It hasn't happened yet, just the disciplinary hearing that looks like it will lead to disbarment.
The indictment was thrown out in early 2010 when a Tucson judge ruled that Thomas had multiple and severe conflicts of interest in the case -- like the fact that his office had once advised her on the issues upon which it tried to prosecute her.
Wilcox achieved vindication earlier this year when Gila County Attorney Daisy Flores declined to move forward with the allegations against her. The case was cooked up under Thomas and Sheriff Joe Arpaio's leadership, based on a Phoenix Magazine article.
That article, by former New Times writer Terry Greene Sterling, begins with as good of a short description of Wilcox as could be had. Sterling describes her as:
hands-down one of the most controversial politicos in Phoenix. In her nine years on the Phoenix City Council and her 15 years [now 18] on the board of supervisors, she's advocated for kids, minorities and people with AIDS. She's helped revitalize Downtown. She's won awards for outstanding public service. She and her husband, Earl, a special assistant in Governor Janet Napolitano's Office of Children, Youth and Families, own El Portal, a popular Downtown Mexican restaurant.
Then Sterling goes into Wilcox's many problems.
No doubt, it'll be an interesting election. Only Max Wilson of the five members of the Board of Supervisors has been totally untouched by scandal -- (he must be hiding something!)
* Andy Kunasek's name was dragged through the mud by an ethically challenged team of law officers (including Lisa Aubuchon and Dave Hendershott) who accused him of illegally spending county money to sweep for listening devices he thought they had placed.
* Don Stapley prevailed in two separate Arpaio-Thomas criminal cases against him -- though the last one only by a Tony Martingilio hair.
* And finally, Fulton Brock, cuckolded by the teenage boy his now-imprisoned wife and likely soon-to-be sentenced daughter seduced.
Are things like this in other parts of the U.S.?
