Tornado Alley (PROG)

[arizona1]

Mr. Pearce is handed his a**, looks for rock.

Sometime in the near future political science students will study the last two years of Arizona politics as a lesson in how not to serve the public and campaign for office. In particular, they'll read about Tuesday, August 28, 2012, when former Senator Russell Pearce, until recently dubbed "de facto governor," was handed his ass in a GOP primary race by a political neophyte.

Russell Pearce has traveled in the wackadoodle world of Arizona politics a long time. He was a deputy with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, where the two peckerheads plotted and eventually acted out their Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum racist routine for decades. All this time Pearce worshipped at the feet of Bircher, conspiracy nut, and Mormon fundy Cleon Skousen, who believed the US Constitution was divinely inspired and could only be saved by white Mormon men. Pearce brought that bigotry to the legislature, when in 2001 he won a House seat in Mesa's ultra-conservative District 18. For years most onlookers considered him a kook—that crazy uncle in the attic raging against "invading" Mexicans, socialist Democrats, femi-nazis, gays, environmentalists, and commie professors.

But after Obama's 2008 election and the tea party's 2010 Summer of Hate, Pearce's ugly policies became fashionable in Arizona, and with help from Jan Brewer, Joe Arpaio, and a bent-over GOP, he pushed through his legacy legislation: SB 1070. At the same time, Pearce was elected President of the Senate, and most political observers considered him the most powerful official in Arizona. Russell Pearce was riding high.

That was only two years ago. Here's how Pearce's campaign for the District 25 senate primary ended Tuesday night:

[A]t southeast Mesa's Rockin' R Ranch, a few Russell Pearce supporters gathered in a mirthless, musty-smelling room where a portable projection screen would soon be spelling doom for his attempted political comeback.

At that point, Pearce was nowhere to be seen, and in short order, reporters and photographers were informed they would not be welcome to stay as he watched the returns with supporters and fellow "tea party" candidates.

Much, much later, word came that Pearce would make no public statement at all, a blanket of silence now shrouding the man who, in Arizona and the nation, had spent so much of his career making noise.
http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Baja%20Arizona%20Kossaks/