By Terri Proud
Between political predators and political operatives, Republican candidates had little chance of winning in Arizona’s General Election 2012. When they weren’t being ignored by their own party, they were being gouged or misguided by “strategists.”
While the failed Romney Get-Out-The-Vote effort called Orca in swing states is almost science fiction, the failure of the Arizona GOP is textbook.
ORCA was an effort by the country club candidate, which spent millions of hard earned dollars on technology to get out the vote in real-time, failed before it ever started. The campaign thought it could keep its manicured hands off the great masses of unwashed conservative voters by attempting to use IPhones rather than eye to eye contact to get voters to the polls.
In Arizona, which was a Romney lock, the Republicans were not affected by an impotent man eating whale, but by sharks who couldn’t put their own hunger for power aside long enough to get candidates elected to positions that would give them greater power…. And restore their credibility.
So while the Republican National Committeeman from Arizona was wasting time battling back Paulbots on Facebook, Republican candidates in races across the state were scrambling for $5 contributions to fend off union funded IE attacks.
At the same time, some of the AZ GOP’s get-out-the-vote operatives were squabbling with each other over whether the addled good old boys or the incompetent new boys should be in control when the whole election was over. Heroically, the Pima County GOP; in one of the blue bastions in the state, and individual LDs; like LD28 were doing everything they could, with what little they had, to get the job done all the while dodging blows from errant idiots pretending to be Constitutional scholars.
Emails flying across overheated laptops from all over the state show a party full of people who seemed to have no idea that there was an election going on. It appeared as if the only election the power brokers in Pinal, Maricopa, and Navajo County cared about was the one for Party leadership in December. In Pima County, Facebook pages were full of posts touting one wanna be leader supported by past failed candidates and their bitter supporters instead if notices about what current candidates might need from the Party faithful to win.
At the same time State Senator Steve Pierce, in his own truly despicable campaign to maintain his power put at risk the Republican majority by refusing to support Republican candidate who might oppose his second term as Senate President. As a result, not only did he hurt the Republican brand at a time it needed all the good PR it could get, but he will most likely never get a bill passed again.
Now, his constituents have virtually no representation, and his push to become Governor is over. It is unlikely he will be invited to another rubber chicken dinner to sell Republican ideals and candidates any time in the near future.
As their embattled candidates ducked for cover, a handful of hacks inside the apparatchik began pointing fingers instead of counting votes.
Now, whoever wins if they are smart, will cobble together a coalition of the angry and disenfranchised and eschew the dolts currently in power and the ones who tried to wrestle it away.
Political “strategists” offered their services to unsuspecting political newcomers, who simply desire to serve their communities. Big promises of access to future funders and payment plans soon get candidates in deep financial and legal hot water as well as alienated from the electorate.
The companies put their clients at legal risk while assuring them that they were old pros who knew how to avoid the landmines of election laws.
Over the years, prospective Tucson candidates have been told by Republican operatives that they would have the money they needed to run if the candidate agreed to hire certain firms. Once signed-on, the candidates are sold expensive websites, extravagant signs and campaign collateral designed to alienate almost any average voter.
This year, some candidates for Pima County Board of Supervisors, signed-on with one firm only to be told later that they were “fired” by the company. Little did they know that they were being “fired” so the firm could take IE money to develop infantile and ineffective attack ads against their opponents.
This money maneuver resulted in at least the appearance of cooperation between the IEs and the candidates… a big legal No-No. It is a violation of the same law for which Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne was just sanctioned.
As a result, candidates now face scrutiny and possible legal trouble for the firm’s ignorance or greed.
In the end, the operatives cared more about the promotion of their personalities, personal power, or pocketbooks more than their limited principles. As a result, we ended up with leadership that has a big personality, immense personal power, a brimming pocketbook, and few, if any, principles.
How fitting. If we were to write a textbook on this year’s Arizona General Election and the Republican Party it would have to be called, “United We Stood, Divided We Fell Fast”