Thu 29 Jul 2010
Chamber Trying to Pass Off Open Borders Crowd as Border Hawks
Posted by Marcus Kelley under Uncategorized[14] Comments
A Chamber of Commerce mailer for Rep. Adam Driggs has recently hit mailboxes in LD 11. The mailer tries to paint Driggs as some kind of immigration hawk. Anyone who pays attention to Arizona politics knows full well that Driggs is part of the “Sanctuary Six” (Driggs, Crandall, Mason, Barto, Quelland, Konopnicki) that walked out on a vote on HB 2280, an anti-sanctuary cities bill and the precursor to SB 1070, rather than vote on the bill. Earlier in the session, Driggs had held up anti-sanctuary legislation for the entire session by using his power as Committee Chairman to not give it a hearing. Then, when Sen. Russell Pearce got the bill around Driggs to the House floor, Driggs walked out as one of the Sanctuary Six.
A look at Driggs’ contributors shows a host of open borders McCainiacs. Most notably among these are Deb Gullet, former notoriously liberal legislator and former McCain Chief of Staff. She was the Gallagher & Kennedy lobbyist that sent an e-mail around touting Greater Phoenix Leadership’s (GPL’s) “Twelve in `10” fundraiser for liberal Republicans to help Democrats raise money and get elected. Reps. Driggs’ and Konopnicki’s names again pop up on the list of pro-corporate handout legislators favored by GPL. Sean Noble is yet another McCainiac and open-borders guy. He too has given to Driggs. Marcus Dell’Artino who works for First Strategic, the same firm employing Wes Gullet, a former McCain staffer and Deb Gullet’s husband, has also contributed to Driggs. Many First Strategic employees have been donating to ultra-liberal 20+ year incumbent Democrat Congressman Ed Pastor. Pastor is about as open-borders as anyone can get. Koponicki has contributed to Driggs. Wonder why? Couldn’t be because he wants like-minded liberals in office to help him push his pro-open borders agenda through the legislature. Shiree Verdone, another McCain staffer also contributed to Driggs. Would the McCainiacs be supporting Driggs if he wasn’t one of them? Almost to a man, the Sanctuary Six endorsed McCain, Quelland being the only name absent from the list. Almost to a man, the Chamber endorsed the Sanctuary Six, again, Quelland being the exception. The ties between McCainiacs, the open-borders crowd and the pro-“business” handouts crowd are unmistakable.
The first lesson should be that anyone receiving a mailer from the Chamber needs to be very skeptical. The voters need to dig deeper to learn the truth. The second lesson is that the Chamber knows very well that its open-borders position is not what the voters want. The Chamber routinely opposes efforts to crack down on illegal immigration and it wants to elect open-borders legislators like Adam Driggs to prevent Russell Pearce from becoming Senate President. That it tries to get them elected by posing them as “tough-on-crime, secure border leaders” is both hypocritical and dishonest.
July 29th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
What else can you expect?
Messer Hamer knows very well where public opinion lies, therefore his organization must wax duplicitous!
This tactic employed every election cycle within the “Stupid” Party has worked well for the business elites in the past.
And once the usual crowd who’ve taken the “hawk” position during primaries and general elections attain power, you can rely upon the fact that they’ll do a “180″ and it’ll be business as usual with the coyotes/human smugglers who provide them with their workforce, and the taxpayers with benefit burdens!
And to be blunt, those who cast their votes for the McCains, Romleys, Quails, Warings, Bittersmiths, Wards, and other “Chamber Pots” and “Chambermaids” deserve what they get!
July 29th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
…”A day earlier, in Milwaukee, in front of an audience of more sympathetic businessmen, McCain had been asked how debate over the immigration bill was playing politically. “In the short term, it probably galvanizes our base,” he said. “In the long term, if you alienate the Hispanics, you’ll pay a heavy price.” Then he added, unable to help himself, “By the way, I think the fence is least effective. But I’ll build the goddamned fence if they want it.”
Shame on Sheriff Babeu and every other phony “border-hawk” in Arizona.
July 29th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Great post. You need to do the same research on the state treasurer’s race; all the RINO’s and open border crowd are supporting Ducey, including Jason Levecke, McCain, etc. On his Roundtable Politics interview last week he dodged the question about whether he has hired illegals and said he opposed a border fence! Thayer Vershoor is endorsed by Sheriff Joe and Sen. Pearce and needs our support!
July 29th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Didn’t the chamber also endorse Huppenthal and give him their “Senator of the Year” award? Some conservative huh.
July 29th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Pedro – You are my new best friend!! You could not be more right in the Treasurers race. Ducey was sweating like a sinner in church when talking about border issues. I would encourage anyone who wants to look into Ducey to google his name and see what you find. There are several articles about how he mismanaged Cold Stone.
At the end of the day we need a proven Conseverative like Verschoor to be the next Treasurer.
July 29th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Did anyone see the Rich Davis hit peice on Adam Driggs that hit the mailbox yesterday? It has a picture of the State Capitol and says, “Four years ago, we sent Adam Driggs to the State Capitol to look after it. What happened? HE SOLD IT!!!
Classic. That should do some damage.
July 29th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
If the Chamber wants to put out a mailer saying “We love Adam Driggs because he is good for Big Business here in Arizona” then fine. Its honest and its who they represent. Really big business interests. But to champion him as a needed leader for secure borders? Cynical pandering at a sickening level. They love open borders, Driggs loves open borders, and lying about it just disgusts me.
July 29th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Are you people for real? Driggs is a good guy and doesn’t legislate too much. Didn’t vote for Napolitano’s budgets either.
We don’t need a Rich Davis, DC insider, buying a state Senate seat. His laughable ideas in attracting business to the state are also full of conflicts of interest (if his businesses are real and actually do what he says they do).
July 30th, 2010 at 12:58 am
OK, I take that back, I just did what the mailer asked me to do and I looked up HB2010 from the third special session.
Driggs voted with Russell Pearce, Ron Gould, Carl Seel, Frank Antenori, etc. None of whom I would consider even slightly liberal. It seems that if Davis would have voted NO as he expects Driggs to have done, Davis would have voted with Rebecca Rios, Meg Burton Cahill, Ken Cheuvront and Kyrsten Sinema. Yikes.
Davis’ hit peice takes a shot at every conservative legislator that most of us support. What looked like a good hit peice, doesn’t seem to fly when you look at the facts. Davis needs to study the issues a little better before he throws stones.
July 30th, 2010 at 4:25 am
This is too funny. Portraying Adam Driggs and Nancy Barto in some light that they don’t have conservative creds anymore.
Are we next going to say that Krstin Sinema is now a moderate because she said on Fox last night that she is all for border security?
The pro-Sheriff Joe/pro-SB1070 Phoenix Law Enforcement Assn. that can’t stand their sanctuary city police chief Jackey Boy Harris endorsed Driggs. So, can 3000 police officers be wrong?
I am now relying on S.R. for comic relief when I want something that makes no sense at all. It has become as funny as the Ariz. Blue Meanie has.
July 30th, 2010 at 9:17 am
So Davis went to work at the White House to protect us after 9-11 and the Driggs folks want to turn him into a “DC Insider”? That’s funny. I can only imagine what they would have done to him had he been in the U.S. Army. Would two tours in Iraq have qualified him as a Middle-Easterner or a foreigner? According to his mailers he and his wife are both Arizona natives. On the good side for Davis, if all Adam Driggs’ fans have on him is he worked in the White House, that’s alright. And if that’s how they want to distract from Adam’s moderate record (or as the Chamber likely calls it, his “hard-core right wing record), then they must not have anything real to brag about. Which makes the point of this blog post.
July 30th, 2010 at 9:43 am
Actually Barnstormer, when it comes to issues of border security and stopping illegal immigration, neither Barto nor Driggs has any credibility anymore as conservatives. They forfeited that when they were the Sanctuary Six and walked off of the floor back in 2009. Those cowards were afraid of being on record as being for sanctuary cities so they ran like rats. Same goes for Konopnicki, Quelland, Mason, and Crandall. You can call those six conservatives all you want, but real conservatives cast conservative votes. They don’t hide in the parking lot until its all over.
July 30th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
On the immigration issue, Nancy Barto is a quintessential “Chambermaid”
July 30th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
Dear CQ (contributing under a different name on a different post),
You are a liar. I did not discharge any debt to the state. You also are violating the business agreement we have. I paid you to be my consultant for June and July. You took my money and back-stabbed me all the while you were trying to force me to run as a team with your criminal client. Posting this during the month that you are supposed to be working FOR me should send a red flag to your other clients. Of course, you damaged them for Scott as well, when Scott tried to get the Legislature to pass an amendment to give him an exclusive contract after he had already lost the bid for E-procurement. He was lobbying without being registered and is unelectable in the general election.