Thursday, July 13th, 2006...5:51 am
Len Munsil: It’s All Goddard’s Fault
Len Munsil’s campaign blog blames Janet Napolitano and Terry Goddard for the two (or, Munsil notes, “at least two” since it sounds like more) serial killers on the loose in the Phoenix area. He claims that Arizona has been “#1 in crime” the entire time the two of them have been in office.
Of course, he neglected to note how this is being measured and that it could be said to be true during many of the years previous to Napolitano’s and Goddard’s reigns.
By the way, the top rate of violent crime came back in 1993 (when reckoned per capita or raw numbers), when Fife Symington and Grant Woods were in charge.
This meshes nicely with a theme that Bill Montgomery has been running against Goddard on: that he hasn’t been prosecuting enough street crime. Traditionally, the State Attorney General’s office doesn’t handle this sort of thing. The crimes that they do handle tend to be white colar crimes, financial crimes or organized crimes such as drug trafficking or money laundering.
Why aren’t Munsil’s rhetorical guns trained on the Maricopa County Attorney’s office, which has more staff than the Attorney General and is actually responsible for prosecuting such cases? Oh, it can’t be because Andrew Thomas is a Republican, right? Naw, this can’t be some cheap partisan attack. Munsil would never do such a thing.
Funny how “small government” Republicans want a state-wide official to take over something that is a local responsibility.
Imagine the hackles that would be raised if tommorrow Goddard announced that he is taking over the investigation one of these serial killer cases. Then we would get a smart alecky press release from the Republicans about the overreaching Goddard engaging in a publicity stunt, wouldn’t we? Thomas would hold an angry press conference saying that Goddard should stick to prosecuting fraudsters and polluters.
NB - By the way Len, while you were complaining that Goddard is spending too much time prosecuting people that victimize the elderly, you neglected to check on what Thomas has been emphasizing on his website. This morning’s top story in his “what’s new” column is a prosecution of three Phoenix area food service establishments. Important, no doubt about it. Had this been Goddard, you’d be complaining about it though.
14 Comments
July 13th, 2006 at 8:03 am
Tedski
Excellent point. I agree. I always thought that the moderate duo of Symington and Woods did a terrible job fighting crime.
Hey, isn’t Woods now a Democrat or endorsing one?
July 13th, 2006 at 9:48 am
Munsil’s comments are a stretch considering that we don’t even have a clue of who these people are and what set them off.
His assertions may be right, but then again, what is he going to say if they catch them and discover that they are both graduates of sheriff Joe’s tent city and that they learned to hate civilized society while they were in there being fed green bologna? Since we know nothing, that has to be presumed to be just as likely as what Munsil is asserting.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:40 am
No, it just shows you how little Munsil understands about fighting crime. The AGs office is a state-wide office that assists the local offices and handles the multi-jurisidiction cases, thats it. And they enforce a very small few of legislative directed laws like the Consumer Fraud Act or the Civil Rights Act. Something that is too big for a county attorney.
Otherwise, it is Thomas’s job to enforce our laws and prosecute these killers and too be honest, its not Thomas’s fault either. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office is a a very long , storied and succesful office regardless of who the elected politician is. Thomas is running the office just fine, honestly. One could accuse him of taking his eye off the ball to go after immigration instead of say ID Theft or Meth? But thats a REAL political debate. Not blaming rapists on Thomas or Goddard
July 13th, 2006 at 10:46 am
No, it just shows you how little Munsil understands about fighting crime.
I disagree, Tom. Munsil has a former deputy county attorney as one of his campaign managers. A guy who prosecuted homicides there and even ran for the office 2 yrs ago.
Munsil knows what that office and the AG’s office does. He’s just twisting the facts to suit his agenda.
July 13th, 2006 at 11:32 am
I disagree, Tom. Munsil has a former deputy county attorney as one of his campaign managers. A guy who prosecuted homicides there and even ran for the office 2 yrs ago.
Bored — so you are saying Munsil’s CAMPAIGN knows how the AG’s office works since one of his staffers gets it … meaning you don’t disagree with tom-az.
Also — ONE of his campaign managerS? I’ve never seen a two headed beast like that run well … but then again the guy REALLY calling the shots in that race is Nathan “SHRED EM UP” Sproul, so I guess it doesn’t matter.
July 13th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
mister t,
I’m not sure of his actual title, but i’ve heard him referred to as a “manager” so i hedged my bet by calling him ‘one of.’
Be careful about that two headed beast remark. I believe our current governor has two chiefs of staff.
July 13th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Nathan Sproul? Is that the same guy who endorsed Carolyn (abortion-on-demand) Allen? How does that work, advise Munsil by day, advocate for abortion by night. Interesting if true.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
No he’s the one that was caught throwing away Dem. voter Registrations last election!
July 13th, 2006 at 8:12 pm
Bored -
The Governor has one campaign manager (Noah Kroloff) and one Chief of Staff (Dennis Burke).
One for running the Government, one for winning the campaign. Very different that two campaign managers or two chief’s of staff.
July 13th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
To learn something more about dear Nathan and his “activities,” go online to the dkospedia page link:
http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/
Nathan_Sproul
July 13th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
That’s messed up. I know munsil was a right wing freak but I thought he was smarter than that. Why would anyone hire a guy like sproul to work his campaign?
July 14th, 2006 at 8:52 am
Mister T,
She has two chiefs of staff: Dennis Burke is the Chief of Staff for Policy and Alan Stephens is the Chief of Staff for Operations.
Geez, it’s right on her web site for crying out loud.
July 15th, 2006 at 12:06 am
chris:
Why would anyone hire a guy like sproul to work his campaign?
Maybe because he’s running against a very popular governor, so he knows the only way he can have a chance is if someone ‘loses’ a bunch of Democratic voter files in the garbage? In that case, he’s looking towards Sproul’s experience and proven track record in these sorts of matters.
July 15th, 2006 at 1:34 am
The reason why Arizona is on top of the crime list is bluntly clear when you examine the FBI crime statistics for 2005. 962 Motor vehicle thefts per 100,000 population, and all but a handful of them in Maricopa or Pima county. Of course, our population centers are much closer to Mexico than the biggest population centers in other states (except maybe California, but we have a much longer border than they do.) The Governor has been pushing border security for months. What does Munsil plan to do about it?
Oh, wait a minute– Munsil does have a plan. We can assume from his criticism of the Governor that if he were Governor, he wouldn’t worry at all about people throwing trash on our highways; We can assume from his criticism of Goddard that according to him, it is perfectly OK if businesses defraud their customers.
Maybe Munsil, since he doesn’t care about it anyway, will simply ask the legislature to make fraud legal. Then the crime rate will go down as well, and he can claim he was successful.
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