Monday, April 10th, 2006...10:19 pm
Hayworth on Russert
Most of you saw J. D. Hayworth on Meet The Press with Tim Russert (Whatever happened to that nice Lawrence Spivak, why isn’t he on anymore?) What many of you may not have noticed was a, well, not a lie, not a preverication, maybe just certain facts left out.
Hayworth was hoping only to talk about how he is going to stop all of those illegals from hopping our fences and impregnating our nubile young women or something like that. When Russert (who has developed a pair as of late) asked him about the Abramoff contributions:
You know, I’m so glad you raised that, because I took the step of writing the tribes that support me. We should point out, when I was elected to Congress, I have more American Indians in my district, nearly one out of every four of my constituents was American Indian, I’m part of a Native American caucus, the co-chair. The real story would have been if the tribes were not supporting me. But you know what I did? I wrote the tribes who enlisted Abramoff and his associates as lobbyists, I said, “Do you want your campaign contributions back?” And they said, “No.” They said, “You have consistently stood up for the sovereign rights of Native peoples, and we respect that, whoever our advocate is in Washington.”
You know, if you believe that he was glad that Russert raised the question, you may just believe the rest of his answer.
Yes, when Hayworth was elected, his district was heavily Native American. It included the Navajo, Hopi and White Mountain Apache, three of the largest native nations in the country. However, these have since been razored out of the district, and he now represents the much smaller Ft. McDowell and Salt River Pima nations. The native population of his district is still significant, but it is deceptive to imply that he represents an overwelmingly Native American district.
The other thing that is deceptive: the contributions in question did not come from tribes in his district, or even in Arizona. His TEAM PAC, of which Abramoff was an early and significant supporter, was funded by Jack Abramoff connected tribes. As I have written here before, the PAC has only one employee, Hayworth’s wife, Mary.
Also, the assertion that he’s had friendly conversations with the tribes about the money and they don’t want it back is incorrect. At least one tribe in Texas has said that they would like their money back.
Another thing that he said that I found interesting:
As I write in my book, let’s take a look back to 2004. Proposition 200 on the ballot in Arizona, to deprive illegals of social benefits, and it passed overwhelmingly. And as the Arizona Daily Star reported, it passed with a majority of Hispanic votes as well. The fact is, Hispanics voted in greater numbers for Proposition 200 than they did for President Bush, who received 43 percent of the Hispanic vote in Arizona.
I don’t know about the stats on Hispanic support of Proposition 200 that he quotes, but I do know of one Anglo that came out publically against it: him, along with the rest of the congressional delegation. When will someone in the press ask him why he’s flip-flopped on this?
2 Comments
April 11th, 2006 at 6:06 am
Plus J.D. claimed that all the money his wife had received was from “over a decade” when in reality, TEAM PAC has only been in existence for 7-years. And the fact remains, that Mary’s salary has been almost half as much as the actual funds that the PAC has distributed to actual candidates.
The fact that it’s not a larger amount of money over that time period doesn’t make it ethical (sure Tom DeLay’s wife took a lot more), it just means that J.D. isn’t nearly as much of a D.C. player as he would like to be - and not as good at fundraising as he probably wishes he were.
April 11th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
I dare you to do it Ted at the next town hall meeting he has.
And I bet it will not be in Tempe, when I was downtown today I picked up my precinct numbers. Tempe really does not like JD that much.
Leave a Reply