Saturday, July 30th, 2005...6:01 am
No, No, THAT Goldwater
Gosh, I guess Janet must really be weak, because all of these Republicans are declaring for Governor.
Don Goldwater, nephew of Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, has announced that he would like to run for governor. Republicans are being quoted in various articles saying that Goldwater would have an advantage because of his name. Yes, the Republicans have such a high opinion of our state’s voters that they are counting on voters thinking that they voted for this guy before.
Goldwater worked for the Goldwater Institute. Since the Goldwater Institute is so against affirmative action and set asides, I’m sure that Don got the job entirely through merit.
What is interesting is that the Republicans sought this guy out to run, even though they were constantly pissed at his uncle after he left office. Barry spoke out on behalf of abortion rights and endorsed allowing gays in the military. In 1992, he endorsed Democrat Karan English for congress and even flirted with endorsing Democrat Gen. Truman Spangrud, a retired Air Force general who was trying to get the nomination against Sen. John McCain. All of these various “treacheries” led to the Republicans removing Barry’s name from the front of their headquarters.
(NB - I’ve always wondered if some of this bitterness stems from his being so out front in asking both Richard Nixon and Evan Mecham to leave office.)
Don Goldwater’s only previous experience for political office was losing a state senate primary against John Huppenthal. It was 1992, so maybe his uncle’s endosement of English that year didn’t endear him to primary voters. He is currently a Republican district chair.
Hmm. So, lets say that Janet decided to quit the office so that she could move to Rabat and study with a Sufi Imam. Hey, it could happen. If this happens, we should recruit Juana Mase or Ward Wallingford to run. They are district chairs, right? Or, if we need one that lost a legislative race too, what about Charlie Salaz?
The last time Uncle Barry ran for office, there were only 2.7 million people in Arizona. We now have a bit shy of that much in one county, with the state’s population being 5.6 million. I’m not sure what connection the Republicans think that people are going to have with the guy. The other thing that is interesting, Goldwater won his elections narrowly; he wasn’t an electoral giant. His last election, for example, was lost on election night, but he was able to make it up when the absentee ballots were counted and managed to squeak out a victory with 49.5% of the vote. Even when he ran for president, he only managed to get a shade over 50%, and had so little for coat-tails that his former campaign manager was defeated for governor that year by Samuel P. Goddard, Jr.
This means they now have three people to run, Goldwater, Sen. John Greene and Teresa Ottesen. Interestingly, of all the candidates that the Republicans had hyped up (Marilyn Quayle, Richard Carmona, et cetera) , none of them ran. Neither Goldwater’s nor Greene’s name was widely circulated in the press; their candidacies seemed to come out of nowhere. I guess their recruitment efforts aren’t what they used to be.
1 Comment
July 30th, 2005 at 8:29 am
The Dems could Swift-Boat this guy by association, tying him to his uncle’s less-than-currently-popular positions on gay rights and the like.
But Dems are too nice and they’d rather lose than fight.
We’ll end up with the biggest, stupidest prick the Repubs can muster. Manuel Noriega comes to mind. I think he’s busy, though.
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