Sonoran Alliance intercepted the following email message from Arizona State Representative Daniel Patterson to his Democrat colleagues:
Colleagues — The allegations against me are lies. I have not been arrested, charged, served or invoked immunity.
It seems I am being blackmailed by a person with bad mental health problems and a violent criminal history I only recently realized the severity of. When I asked this person to please consider moving out of my house, to protect my daughter, she went in to [sic] a rage. She attacked me, but I never hit her.
The truth will come out. You should not rush to judgment, please.
Members, I ask you please to call me to discuss my side of the story, the truth.
Then there is this little tidbit from The Yellow Sheet Report:
ETHICS COMPLAINT ‘POLITICALLY MOTIVATED’
Patterson also struck back at his caucus for calling for his resignation and filing an ethics complaint – moves that Patterson said were politically motivated. “Sometimes, they have a lynch mob mentality in politics. People want to elevate themselves by throwing someone else under the bus,” he said. Although he said on multiple occasions that he doesn’t hold anything against his colleagues and that he likes and respects Campbell and Hobbs, he said that he suspects they are trying to bolster their own political image at his expense. Campbell’s call for him to step down, he said, was driven by the fact that he was “one of the more independent members of the Democratic caucus, and some of the Democratic Party bosses in Phoenix don’t like that. Maybe they’re hoping to replace me with a yes-man who will toe the party line.” Hobbs, meanwhile, was seeking a cause to build her Senate campaign around: “Katie has always been a crusader on these types of issues. Maybe this is something she thinks will help her in her Senate campaign.” But, ultimately, he said, he works for his constituents, not his party leaders. Patterson attended the floor session today, but was only present to record his attendance. During the multiple COW calendars, he was not on the floor, but he returned for the third reading of bills.