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Arizona Senate President Pearce Has Been Recalled
Mark down July 8th as a day history was made in Arizona.
In a swift affirmation of Arizona's fast-growing and powerful new political movement, Secretary of State Ken Bennett notified Gov. Jan Brewer that the once seemingly invincible architect of the state's controversial SB 1070 "papers please" immigration law has officially been recalled. Bennett confirmed that the recall petitions delivered by the Citizens for a Better Arizona "exceeds the minimum signatures required by the Arizona Constitution."
"Let's make no mistake about it," said Randy Parraz, co-founder of the Citizens for a Better Arizona. "Russell Pearce has been recalled."
According to Bennett's statement, Pearce has two options: Resign from office within five business days, or become a candidate in the recall election. Either way, Pearce becomes the first state senate president in recent memory to be recalled in the nation.
"No one expected this or picked up on this political earthquake," said Parraz, one of the main organizers behind the extraordinary grassroots campaign, which electrified a bipartisan effort in Pearce's Mesa district. Parraz credited a "dramatic shift" over the past six months due to Pearce's often extremist leadership in state senate.
"We had people pouring into the office," Parraz said, citing the role of Republicans, Democrats and Independents in the door-to-door canvassing initiative, "and they told us: Russell Pearce is too extreme for our district and state."
Beyond his self-proclaimed key role in the state's notorious SB 1070 law, Pearce oversaw a near circus-level of extremist and reckless legislation in the Arizona senate this past spring, including draconian cuts in education and health care. Mired in various scandals, Pearce infamously accused President Obama of "waging jihad" on America. And last month Fox News Phoenix explored his widely denounced connections to neo-Nazi hate groups. In a recent interview with FOX News, Pearce dismissed the recall effort as the work of "far left anarchists."
In truth, the Secretary of State's office confirmed that an additional one third of the necessary signatures had been properly collected and verified.
Within 15 days, Gov. Brewer must set the date for the recall election, which presumably will take place in November.
And while no single candidate has emerged to claim the frontrunner's position, one thing is clear: The Citizens for a Better Arizona has galvanized a new era in Arizona politics.
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11 Comments so far
Show AllWatch out Wisconsin. This week it's your turn!
Hopefully, with others waiting in line...
He will go down in history as the first to be recalled in a long, long time - but with news coming out thanks to Wisconsin, about the Koch Bros, about veterans, about mortgages, about bailouts and the other nefarious actions under the rubric of 'conservatism' when in fact it is cowardly reactionary totalitarianism - he certainly will not be the last.
Its not nice to try to fool real, honest conservatives
While this is a good first step, the truly more difficult work of turning out enough voters to turf this douche bag has hopefully begun...and expect Pearce not to make it easy or go quietly.
So let me get this straight: Either he resigns within five days, or he announces his intention to run for his own seat in November, and gets to keep it in the meantime.
Well, that's easy enough. He'll do the latter, and be reelected. That's what Arizona is like.
While it is good that this guy may not retain his seat in the legislature, who will replace him - there are plenty more in the state Senate who voted for everything he stood for.
In addition, the people who organized the recall should start work on the head of the education department, who is doing his best to kill education in the state.
From russellpearce.com - In 2006 I authored Prop. 100 to deny bail to illegal aliens who commit serious crimes, Prop. 102 to deny punitive damages to any illegal alien who sues an American Citizens, Prop. 103 to make English the Official Language of Arizona and Prop. 300 to deny day care, tuition to illegal aliens or adult classes to them (and they passed in the election by over 75% on average, including 60% of Hispanics).
In 2007 I wrote the toughest employer sanctions law in the nation to stop illegal employers from hiring illegal aliens with revocation of their business license (The Profits over Patriotism Crowd).
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Why would anyone here legally have a problem with any of this. Most of those signature will turn out to be by illegal immigrants. Russell will be here for a long time.
Badger, Prop 100 not only denies bail to immigrants, it also deprives them of any defense in court, unless they're wealthy enough to hire a lawyer, insuring their conviction and sentencing to a privately-owned jail which, in turn, makes money for certain members of AZ's Republican Party. This is corruption, not justice.
Prop. 102 is a godsend for those who employ workers without papers. It means no matter what the boss does to you, even if you are maimed on the job and it's his fault, you can't sue. Great law.
Prop 103, seriously? Spanish was spoken for hundreds of years in that region before English was ever heard, and Arizona has only been a state since 1912. Should Americans of Hispanic descent demand their native language be the only one spoken? Besides, whose English is the 'official' English language? George W. Bush's? Sarah Palin's? Jan Brewer's? Queen Elizabeth II's? Who decides what is 'official' English and, before you answer that, take that burrito out of your mouth.
Prop. 300 only serves to push workers to crime since they have no daycare to take care of their kids while they're at work, and it makes them ignorant since they can't get an education, plus those adult classes taught the immigrants English and how to become a US citizen. (Oops.)
People like Russell Pearce wouldn't be here if the natives at the time when their ancestors arrived had demanded the same restrictions on new immigrants he requires. Instead, the native Americans invited the Europeans to share the bounty of this country. Rather than condemning immigrants and trying to blame them for our problems (and the GOP-controlled AZ legislature is cynically using them to take the public's eye off the massive debt they've rung up), America should be welcoming them and helping them to prosper, just as we welcomed earlier generations of immigrants. The inscription on the Statue of Liberty invites the world's poor and huddled masses to these shores; too bad there was no Lady Liberty along the AZ-Mexico border. Aside from that, if these immigrants were caucasians coming from Sweden or Germany, do you think Pearce would be fulminating at the mouth over their working here? These bigoted Arizonans need a lesson in basic decency as well as constitutional democracy.
BTW, you can't name one large company that has been prosecuted or their license to do business terminated under Pearce's BS law, proposed strictly for the photo-op and PR it provided.
Amen.
That's the opening gambit won, but until the recall election is won, this isn't much. Congratulations on a winning first step, and continued success through to the end of this battle. May it inspire further steps in Wisconsin.