Arizona recall: Why Russell Pearce lost

Washington post ^ | 11/09/2011 | Washington post

[BlueMoose]

Most coverage of Tuesday’s night’s recall of state Senate President Russell Pearce (R) in Mesa, Arizona has focused on the fact that Russell authored the state’s controversial immigration legislation.

[donna]

Local news is just like national news. They made him out to be evil. Illegal immigration was not discussed.

[tallyhoe]

He lost because the Dems figured out how to run a third party candidate! 2 conservatives against each other = Democrat win!!!

[BlueMoose]

Could Pearce have had a character flaw ?

[elpadre]

I hope that doesn’t happen in 2012 presidential election. That is what gave us Clinton, twice.

[Sooth2222]

"Lewis, the charter school executive who defeated him, is a conservative Republican not a moderate. He differs from Pearce on immigration less in policy than in tone and focus, something Democrats take as a victory."

I'm not sure that I understand how a conservative Republican beating a conservative Republican amounts to a Democrat victory, so I'll go to my dictionary and look up the definition of the word "victory" since this is a meaning that I'm not familiar with.

[arthurus]

This is maybe now a template for recalls wherever they are legal and conservatives hold offices. This could be a national campaign and will keep governments in turmoil even if not always successful. It is coming to a point where conservatives will have to win two elections to get into and stay in office.

[tallyhoe]

Yea the flaw he had was closing the border and having illegals arrested!

[tallyhoe]

What is the Democrat template if they don’t win on the first count if it is close enough will challenge the election over and over until they get the outcome they want. The next thing they do is demonize the opposition until the stupid voter votes for them. If that don’t work now they use the third party candidate to split the vote and win that way...

[tallyhoe]

The dems might try the third party vote. The news media keeps talking about Trump, Paul, or somebody else to get in the race as a third party candidate!!!

[Pres Raygun]

It is possible that Pearse could win back his seat next November. If he decides to challenge Lewis in the primary he has a good chance of winning, since the majority of Lewis’ support came from Democrats not Republicans. If Pearse did win the primary he would beat any Democrat in the election given that the district is heavily Republican.

[fifedom]

Thanks. That is an eye-opening article. I had no idea about the issues in the recall. For those of you who have not read it:

Immigration was a factor in his defeat — in large part because the Mormon Church decided that it should be. But an ethics scandal and under-handed campaign tactics also played a role.

"The Mormon church clearly percolated below the surface to make sure that its members knew that Russell Pearce was making their missionary efforts in Central and South America more difficult,” said Nathan Sproul, Republican strategist

“I've heard [Mormon conservatives] say, 'We need to love people,' and 'We shouldn't be doing this to people,” one source told Religion Dispatches.

Read the article about the scandals that Pearce was accused of.

Pearce also gave a ton of interviews and sounded pretty weird in places. I heard him on KSFO here in CA.

So, definitely not a La Raza victory although the slimes in the media will paint it as such.

[Saundra Duffy]

“There were also other issues dogging Pearce.”

But it’s more fun to focus on the anti Mormon angle.