The crew at Arizona 8th has a great summary of the Republican LD 26 meeting that took place today. The Sonoran Alliance correspondent was at the meeting but had to leave early to attend a picnic. We defer to the detailed coverage of Framer.

     We agree with Framer that there is some “revisionism” going on out there. On the other hand we disagree that Kyl’s win was as much luck as good campaigning. Jon Kyl is a highly skilled politician and a major part of his victory was due to the appeal of the candidate himself. Kyl is simply a good senator and an excellent strategist.

     One other point, Kyl was not the lone highlight. The standout candidate was Dean Martin. He won with a margin of 13.4 points as a strong supported of Prop 300 in a bad year for Republicans. Simple awesome.

     Other standouts are Shadegg and Franks. The significance is not that they won but by how large a margin both won (almost 60/40,) again supposedly in a bad year for Republicans.

     Thank you to Framer for saying what needed to be said.

Saturday 12-9-06. 4:30 pm

      Greg Wendt and Lisa Wendt of San Francisco, CA (generous benefactors of the Democrat Party and its candidates) gave over 40% of the funds for Grassroots Arizona; a PAC set up to target the Republican chairman of legislative district 11. The details are chronicled below.

     On August 10, 2006 a Candidate Support or Opposition Committee called Grassroots Arizona PAC was registered with the Arizona Secretary of States office. Anne Lynch is listed as the chairman and Jane Lynch as the treasurer.

     The first two donations were made by Jane Lynch and Paul Hickman. Since Jane is the treasurer her name is not a big surprise. It is our understanding that Paul Hickman is Chief of Staff for U.S. Senator John McCain. That is interesting.

     The purpose of the PAC seems to have been to get PC’s elected in LD 11 that would support someone besides Rob Haney as chairman. The PAC also mailed out a letter to LD 11 PC’s in support of Fife Symington for chairman. The letter was signed by Jon Kyl, John Shadegg, Jeff Flake, Rick Renzi, and several other Republicans from Arizona.

     Besides the seed money put in by Lynch and Hickman several other people made donations. Most of them seem to be well-connected Republican’s from the Phoenix area. In all the PAC raised $16,400 in direct contributions. Up to this point it would look like several Republican insiders conspired to suppress Ron Haney and his group of conservative PC’s in LD 11. It is regrettable that it came to this but a case can be made that it should not be a surprise that McCain and the party establishment wanted to oust Haney. Rob has not been very supportive of McCain.

     There were two names on the PAC donation list that we could not trace right away, Gregory Wendt and Lisa Wendt. At first we were thrown off by the last name Wendt, which has some meaning in Phoenix. But it turns out that Gregory (or Greg) and Lisa are not from Phoenix. The tip-off was Lisa’s employer listed on the disclosure forms, Hambrecht. That is not a common name and it led us right to WR Hambrecht + Co, a financial service firm based in San Francisco, CA.

     Once we got to California it all opened up. Besides donating $3,400 each to the Grassroots Arizona PAC (over 40% of the PAC funding), Greg and Lisa have been very generous to Democrats. For Greg see this link. For Lisa see the following link here. Further details can be found by searching the Federal Election Commission’s web site. Greg’s has donated to such people as Ron Wyden, Max Cleland, Barack Obama, Diane Feinstein, and Claire McCaskill, among many other Democrats. So how does a big time Democrat donor from San Francisco end up funding a PAC set up to target a legislative district chairman in North-Central Phoenix? Perhaps the answer comes from one of the very few Republicans that Mr. Wendt has supported, John McCain. Greg donated several thousand to McCain in 2003. The link can further be seen by checking the donations of Mrs. Lisa Wendt. She has been very generous to many of the same politicians as Greg, including McCain. She also gave $5,000 to Straight Talk America on 8-1-05 and another $5,000 on 3-31-06. This is all public record available on the FEC site, including her employer W.R. Hambrecht. The amazing part is not that they made a donation but that they even found out about the Grassroots Arizona PAC. It looks like someone could not find enough people from inside his party to neutralize one of their own so he had to turn to Democrats for the rest of the money.

     Many people claiming to be loyal Republicans have objected to Rob Haney’s actions. None of these people cared to disclose that several “loyal Republicans” conspired with a PAC heavily funded by two Democrat donors from out of state. I have a very simple questions for Senator Kyl, when did you know that the letter you were signing to oust a hard-working district chairman was funded by Democrat donors? Will this be standard procedure from now on, to conspire with national Democrat supporters to silence the Republican base?

Monday 12-4-06, 10:35 pm

There is updated coverage of the race for Republican State Chairman on Hot AZ It Gets.

     We are sorry for being late with this story. The LD 30 Republican Committee held their elections on November 18th. Patti O’Berry was elected chairman after an acrimonious campaign. A Green Valley PC had organized a challenge to Patti and criticized the women for having too many parties. That charge did not go over very well and Patti ended up winning. The district also selected their 28 delegates to the Republican state convention in January. The delegates are slip about even between moderates and conservatives.

     The Pima County Republican Committee held their elections today. See Arizona 8th for the results. It was a pretty quiet event except for a floor nomination for First Vice-Chair. Meg Econ seemed a little indignant at the challenge but ended up winning anyway. There were a high number of candidates for member-at-large. Following one-minute speakers (or longer in some cases) the members elected 5 people to serve. Three of the 5 are conservatives so there may be a slight change at the county headquarters. With Judi White serving again as chairman do not look for too much of a difference though.

     A few public officials attended. President of the Senate Tim Bee was there. Tim looked very relaxed and enjoyed mixing with everyone. Supervisor Ray Carroll also attended. Noticeably absent was Tucson Mayor and pseudo-Republican Bob Walkup.

     The campaign for State Chairman is well underway. Phoenix insider Lisa James was working the room and briefly spoke from the podium. A representative for Republican National Committeeman Randy Pullen also spoke to the audience.

Saturday 12-2-06, 8:15 pm

Seems the Democrats have their own issues in their upcoming elections for a state chairman. For excellent coverage see Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.

Friday 12-1-06, 12:30 pm