Posted on 01/20/2004 9:05:55 AM PST by VU4G10
Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo is a thorn in Karl Rove’s side, to say the least. Tancredo favors border controls; the president and many in Congress do not. Rove, the president’s senior advisor, is attempting to find someone to run against Cong. Tancredo in this year’s election. So far, he has no takers. After all, Tancredo won re-election in 2002 with a 70-percent majority, and no mentally-balanced person would want to challenge such a formidable foe. It would be a waste of time and money.
Many Arizona conservatives are urging State Rep. Russell Pearce to run against Cong. Jeff Flake in District 6 this year. Pearce is a senior advisor to the popular Protect Arizona Now (PAN) initiative. If placed on the 2004 ballot, and if voters support it as expected, PAN would actually require proof of citizenship for things of some importance, such as voting. The White House, state and national GOP leadership favor the president’s Temporary Worker Program and the Flake-McCain-Kolbe guest worker bill, which amount to nothing more than amnesty for millions of foreign invaders.
Now the stage is set: two diametrically-opposed sides with sharply-contrasting views on the border invasion. Tancredo and Pearce are advocating tighter controls of the borders and a stoppage of the drain on American taxpayers caused by the border invasion. The corporate appeasers want to dissolve the borders.
The worst thing in Rove’s world would be to lose Flake and have Pearce replace him through the election process. Rove wants to subtract Tancredo and isn’t going to succeed in that aim. He sure doesn’t want Pearce -- another Tancredo -- going to Washington, D.C., a year from now. Two Tancredo’s are two too many, in the view of the Bush Administration. However, most Republicans would love to see Tancredo and Pearce representing them in Congress.
How motivated are those who oppose Tancredo and Pearce? Let's put things into proper perspective and look at some very recent history.
Some influential and well-connected people have recently suggest that Barnes may be a set-up, a plant to dilute a potential Pearce candidacy by splitting votes between Flake's would-be challengers. Barnes is a moderate who's totally with President Bush.
On Dec. 31, Rep. Pearce was getting ready to appear as a guest on Salt Lake City Radio Station KSL's “Born on the 4th of July" program, hosted by Barbara Jean. It appeared that this would be just another of the many state/regional/national media appearances Pearce would make on the border controversy. As it turned out, this was no ordinary day.
Arizona people listening on the Internet reported that the Salt Lake City station's power went down and the show’s producers were having trouble with outgoing broadcasting and incoming calls. Just bad luck? Tampering? Sun spots? Possibly any of the above, but we're just getting warmed up. There's more to the story.
Fast forward to last week when Pearce was getting ready to guest-host two hours of Ernie Hancock's show on KFNX Radio in Phoenix. Guess what? The station reported losing power and similar problems as the Utah station had experienced. Pearce claims a car accident damaged a nearby power source. But wait: we're still not done.
Rusty Childress, co-chairman of PAN, was a guest on KJZZ Radio, of Mesa, last week ... and guess what happened? The call-in lines went dead.
On Saturday night, Kathy McKee, the other co-chair of PAN, tried to call KFNX Radio to be the guest on the "Mad as Hell" program. ''To make a long story short, I couldn't get in .. . . because the phone lines went down at 10:45 p.m.,'' McKee said. ''They had to call me and patch me in, but then callers couldn't call in.'' Hmmm ... mighty, mighty interesting series of events.
Also, last week GOPUSA/Arizona posted two separate Internet polls on the Congressional District 6 race. The first poll appeared on the Internet for three days and queried readers as to their choice between Barnes and the incumbent Flake. This was a poll that did not get much traction or generate much excitement. Barnes received 22 of the 40 total votes cast, with Flake garnering 13 votes and the third option: “other” getting five votes.
In mid-week, the poll changed to add Pearce to the mix. Almost as quickly as the poll went up, some unknown person(s) with great technical expertise -- possibly some of it legal -- developed a very keen interest in the poll. It became readily apparent that the insertion of Pearce’s name had tripped the sensor of someone very interested in one Arizona congressional seat.
Within 12 hours, 188 votes showed up on the poll screen. Flake and Barnes were neck and neck; Pearce did not show up on the radar. A short time later, the vote tally reached 240 and Flake began to pull away from Barnes. Pearce barely registered a heartbeat with a 3-percent showing.
Then a remarkable thing happened for the first time in the 20-month history of GOPUSA/Arizona polls: The numbers actually went down -- from 240 total votes to 75. And Pearce’s numbers dropped to zero.
Then the vote tally started racing wildly upward. In the next few hours, the vote total pushed toward 2,000. Flake was winning big and Pearce was staying at zero percent, even though his supporters informed me they were starting to vote for him -- and starting to wonder why their tallies were not showing up. In one 10-minute period, 100 new votes went up on the board.
The next morning, the vote total continued to balloon, reaching nearly 4,800. It had been less than 36 hours since the poll was posted on the Internet. Flake had a lead of 2-1 over Barnes, and Pearce registered a faint glimmer with one percent of the vote.
As emails started coming in from bewildered people watching the poll, GOPUSA’s CEO, Bobby Eberle, was alerted about the dubious nature of the poll. Whoever was tampering with this poll had all the guile of a Pampalona bull on its way to Barcelona.
A short time later, Eberle confirmed that someone had indeed hacked into the system. He advised that the poll be removed to get the hacker out of the system. A new poll was quickly posted. Over the next several hours, only a trickle of new votes came in on the new poll. Someone no longer had any interest in GOPUSA/Arizona polls.
Looking again at the bogus poll results, one more strange occurrence was discovered. The poll totals now sat at 4,514 votes, a decline of nearly 300 votes in the last few minutes. Flake had 2,880 “votes,” Barnes had 1,560, Pearce 66 and the “other” option had four votes. Whomever tampered with Flake’s vote total obviously took Barnes’ total up in an effort to make it look like a second contestant was registering believable vote totals. Nice try, but it didn’t work. Nice, illegal try.
The 4,514 votes represented a higher number than the total number of votes cast in all the GOPUSA/Arizona poll votes for the entire year of 2003.
Now the big questions: Who has an interest in the re-election of Cong. Flake? Who has an interest in undermining Rep. Pearce? Is the hacker just some kid down the street who likes to play games with other people’s websites? Was it a political organization or a political operative acting on someone’s orders? Who would care enough about this particular poll to risk a visit from the FBI for hacking?
The answers, as of this moment, are unknown, but the questions are legitimate.
As of Sunday night, Eberle had not responded to queries about whether or not he was able to discern the identity of the hacker, or if he had reported the crime to authorities.
One footnote: Just as Cong. Tom Tancredo concluded his address to the Arizona Republican Assembly in Scottsdale Saturday morning, the power went out in the auditorium. Russell Pearce was in that room; he had introduced Tancredo. Two Tancredo’s is two too many for some people.
Who mentioned McClintock lol?
The voters of California, including liberals threw out Davis after his mindless pandering to illegal aliens and giving them drivers licenses. Some polls say as much as 30% of the voters were influenced by that decision to vote against him.
Now if you want to think illegal immigration and pandering to them is wonderful... fine, but most of us don't feel that way.
The bigger lesson learned from the California recall for Karl Rove and all other astute observers? The loud, disaffected minority fringers are an irrelevance when a popular, moderate Party favorite can garner crossover support. Like Arnold in October. Like Bush this coming November.
True, very true.
"Influenced" how? To vote for Arnold instead of Cruz? To vote for Tom instead of Cruz? To not vote?
What are the breakdowns of vote impact between Schwarzenegger, Bustamante and McClintock from this outrage? Surely you have those factoids at hand.
So it's the "give me the link" game now. It's very easy to find through google, help yourself.
There were endless stories on it that enough voters were outraged by his drivers license scheme to influence their vote. It's that simple and it's not my problem you're having a hard time accepting that.
Yep. Fringe on the right and fringe on the left is still fringe.
Says who? I've never heard Rep. Tancredo say anything that was "over the top". Not once. He's one of the most level-headed Congressman I've had the pleasure to meet, to read, and to watch.
What the hell are you talking about? What "b.s." did Tancredo "pull" on Flake?
I keep hearing this, but, apparently, nobody votes on dragging illegals out of the country. Bush I didn't do it, Clinton didn't do it, GW isn't doing it, and illegal immigration is way down the list of issues that people care about.
How do you explain that?
Davis was in trouble concerning cooking the states books, but you're right - the license proposal was the coup de grace. It lent the recall tremendous popular momentum.
That's why you third party malcontent fringers are to be kicked to the curb by the GOP and just left there to rot. You guys are arsonists. Tancredo should have stayed the hell out of Arizona. Gee, is he a national candidate for something? Bring the punk on already as your Contitution Party messiah.
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