This is the only Arizona Centennial story I will write.
Sorry, but I can’t be rosy as Arizona inches towards its 100th b-day on Valentines day.
As we all know, not all birthdays are great.
Arizona, on its hundredth birthday, finds itself under the leadership of an increasingly extreme and expensive Arizona Legislature that seems distanced from Arizona universities (as evidenced by the guns on campus measure it will surely pass) and Hispanics (as evidenced by a new slew of immigration laws about to be pitched.)
We need to ask ourselves: How did the people in the Arizona Senate and House get  their power?
Political scientists have a plausible explanation.
1. Extreme candidates tend to get voted into office in closed primaries, which most of us don’t vote in. Closed primaries are those primaries offered by the parties – ie, the Republican primary and Democratic primary. We don’t vote in these because we are lazy or busy or Independents or the wrong party or we don’t know about it.
2. Once the fringe candidates win the primaries, they advance to general elections.
3. That’s when most voters vote.
4. But by then, it’s too late.
5. The elections have already been decided, to a large degree, in the closed primaries, by the fringe voters who choose fringe candidates.
6. There’s a way to weed out wing nuts, though, the political scientists say — “open primaries.”
7. In open primaries, all voters – Republicans, Democrats and Independents – vote on the same day on one ballot. If you’re a Dem, you can vote Republican. And vice-versa. And Independents, also can vote for whomever from whatever party.

There’s a current petition drive, called Open Elections, Open Government http://azopengov.org/petition-locations2.aspx, that seeks open primaries in Arizona.

To celebrate Arizona’s birthday, decide whether you want to sign it.

Arizona Department of Corrections Launches Inmate Healthcare Probe, USA Today says. The newspaper reports:

“A diabetic prisoner, waiting months for insulin, lost sight completely in one eye and partially in the other. …An epileptic who wasn’t given his medications suffered repeated seizures for weeks…A man with a growth on his penis was denied medical treatment for two years. Doctors ultimately diagnosed a cancerous tumor on his penis; the organ had to be amputated, and doctors told him the cancer had spread to his stomach….An inmate with a cancerous growth on his lip waited seven months for treatment. Most of his lip and mouth were removed, leaving him permanently disfigured.”

New York Times reporter Marc Lacey wrote this story.

I wish I had written it because it is really good.

It’s about federal officials who speak out against what they perceive as a failed drug policy, and what happens to them.

Come with me to meet Herman Cain,  who today will defend himself against allegations he sexually harassed four women.

It is a warm day in November, a beautiful day, high 60s.  Red petunias in the Scottsdale Plaza resort gardens open themselves to the sun. A fountain bubbles. Reporters with white HERMAN CAIN 2012 press credentials dangling around their necks race past the petunias into a conference room with a makeshift stage holding a podium with mics. Behind it are  four American flags.   TV guys wearing earphones stand like artillery men near their cameras. A phalanx of reporters with wired laptops sit in the back of the room, and about 20 reporters with notebooks and Twitter-ready iPhones sit on rows of chairs facing the stage. A dozen or so photographers sit on the floor, angling to get an unobstructed view. About 13 Cain staffers dressed in suits stand near the right hand side of the stage. Another staffer stands on the left side of the stage. Cain’s main press officer, J.D. Gordon, passes out his card to journalists. There are so many national  journos here. The networks, the wire services, the big newspapers.

Now  a young guy with a very serious expression and a bright orange necktie peers out at the reporters.

Meet Nathan.

He is Herman Cain’s assistant. When you see Nathan, you know Herman Cain is someplace close.

The last time I saw Nathan, he was shepherding Herman Cain to and from a press conference at Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office. That was a month ago, in October.  There weren’t too many national reporters at that press conference. Back then, though, Herman Cain was at the top of his game. His poll numbers were soaring. He made a hollow apology about his ideas on an electric border fence, then allowed he’d still favor building it. He touted himself as a man who isn’t afraid to speak the truth, a good businessman with a solid plan (9-9-9) to get America out of its crisis.  As he raced off to a sold-out Republican fundraiser, I think he looked downright jubilant. Americans were finally taking him seriously.

What a difference a month makes.

Now Cain seems subdued.

Really subdued.

It had been well over a week since news reports detailed three cases of sexual harassment against Cain. They happened years before, but now that Cain was a presidential contender, the cases mattered.

Then a fourth accuser, Sharon Bialek, went public. She said Cain once groped at her genitals.

The New York Times broke the name of another accuser, Karen Kraushaar, who accused Cain of sexual harassment when he headed the National Restaurant Association. She got a small settlement.

Cain looks out at the reporters and the cameras click, click, click, click.

Sharon Bialek, he says, is a “troubled woman” trotted out by a Democratic machine to undo  him.

He doesn’t think he even recognizes her.

All the accusations against him are false and he “has never acted inappropriately.”

Click, click, click.

He’s been married to Gloria for 43 years and she told him on the phone, direct quote, that Sharon’s  accusation “doesn’t sound like something you would do.”

Then the questions come:

CBS News: Would you take a lie detector test?

Cain: Yes

ABC News: One accuser received money from the National Restaurant Association. Did she make up the allegations of sexual harrassment?

Cain: Her accusations were found to be baseless. She was paid money as part of an agreement when she left her job. She was not paid  a settlement. The word settlement has legal implications.

The Wall Street Journal: Four women have accused you of sexual harassment.  How do you explain this?

Cain: Look at where it is coming from. Where it is coming from is some people don’t want me to be president.  There will probably be others. Not because I’m aware of any, but because the Democratic machine will be relentless.

Fox News: Mitt Romney says the accusations are disturbing.

Cain: I agree, they are disturbing.

CNN: Are these all baseless accusations? Why?

Cain: I was only referring to the lady who filed the charge. (Karen.)

New York Times: Talk about Karen Kraushaar.

Cain: I remember standing next to her and saying you are the same height as my wife. The door was wide open. The secretary was sitting right there. That was what she was most upset about. She did not react at the time.

Click, click, click.

Then Cain says something about getting back on point. He’s the guy who can pull America out of its economic crisis.

And off he goes, accompanied by Nathan and the campaign team.

The reporters file stories on their laptops. Everyone starts packing up.

Outside, Karl and Kay Koller stand in the parking lot, trying to get a glimpse of Herman Cain.

They are “tea party types” in their 70s, and they drove 40 miles from their home in Surprise just  to see Herman Cain.

“We don’t know if we should support him,” says Karl.

And Kay says she thinks Sharon Bialek made up her story.

“We’re old now,” says Karl. “This is a new generation. Each generation has to figure things out for themselves.”

Here is the video.

Recently,  Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain visited Phoenix and sought the endorsement of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. When Cain and Arpaio walked into the conference room at the sheriff’s headquarters, Cain beamed.

Cain had enjoyed a huge uptick in national polls, which had him running neck-in-neck against Mitt  Romney in the Republican presidential primary.   He would soon speak at a sold-out fundraiser, where he would be feted by Tea Partier state Sen. Lori Klein, who is famous for packing a loaded gun to the senate building and pointing it at a reporter.

(This is a pic of Lori Klein taken at the fundraiser. It was taken by Gage Skidmore.)

Klein wasn’t packing, at least not visibly, as she stood in the doorway of Sheriff Joe’s conference room while Herman Cain  listened to Sheriff Joe say Herman Cain was a good guy who spoke his mind.

Of course Sheriff Joe did not endorse Herman Cain.

He could take his time.

Republican presidential primary candidates seem to gravitate to Sheriff Joe.

Once, when I was writing my book, Sheriff Joe told me  everyone seeking the Republican nomination for the presidency  — even Bob Dole “the Viagra guy “– came to visit him for a photo op and presser and to get his endorsement. (Sheriff Joe had endorsed Romney over Arizona Sen. John McCain in the last presidential primary.)

Then Cain started talking. The usual stuff. About Godfather’s Pizza  and 9-9-9.

But then reporters began to question him about his notion of hot-wiring a border fence to electrocute Mexicans attempting to cross into the United States.

When a Latina reporter told Cain immigration is a sensitive subject in Arizona, Cain proffered a hollow apology.

I was just kidding. I am  sorry if  my  joke about the fence offended anyone.

Then  Brahm Resnik, an NBC reporter, forced Cain to own up to his comments. “Why don’t you take ownership of what you said…You weren’t kidding,” Resnik said.

OK, Herman Cain answered, I wasn’t kidding about the fence.

Herman Cain and Sheriff Joe at Phoenix Press Conference. Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

Reporters peppered Cain with questions. Sheriff Joe felt compelled to rescue him.

Sheriff Joe said something like this: “Why not pick on me? I’m the guy who jails immigrants in hot tents.”

No one paid attention. Then Cain left. Klein left. The sheriff left.

I walked outside, where a group of angry anti-Sheriff Joe demonstrators stood near the driveway leading out of the parking garage. They knew Cain would soon drive out, and they were red-hot angry with the guy who wanted to hot-wire the border fence.

Sheriff Joe came out to the plaza, hoping to divert the crowd. But mostly, reporters from other states clustered around him, which, of course, was fine with him.

When Cain and his entourage drove out of the parking garage, the demonstrators chased the car down the street.

It was a metaphor, really, because in the weeks to come Cain would be chased down the street … a lot.

By his own words and actions.

First, his campaign launched a campaign ad in which his chief of staff smoked a cigarette. Next, Cain questioned the existence of Palestinians.  And finally, he  faces mounting allegations of sexual harassment during his stint as a Washington lobbyist.

And not even Sheriff Joe can rescue Herman Cain from himself.

Photo by Farmer Dodds from Flickr

Almost three years ago, on a cold night in November, two Border Patrol agents allegedly came across four “Mexican National” pot smugglers in the Arizona desert. The agents, Dario Castillo and Ramon Zuniga, forced the smugglers to take off their shoes, socks and jackets (just like drop house kidnappers) and burned them. They forced the smugglers to eat pot. Then they sent them hightailing into the desert. Now the two agents have been indicted for human rights violations by a federal grand jury in Tucson. Again, this is all alleged.  It’s too early for the BP agents to respond. But you  can read the DOJ press release below.
Border Patrol 2011-170(Castillo et al)

Albert Gaxiola, A Tucson Courtroom, The Arivaca Home Invasion Murders

A hot July morning, I’m sitting with journalist Dave Ricker in the media room of the Pima County Superior Court in Tucson.

A windowless room, a table, a few chairs.

We’re waiting for the jury to decide if Albert Gaxiola should be sentenced to death for killing little  Brisenia Flores and her dad Raul in a bloody home invasion in the Arizona borderlands.

We’ve been in this room  before, waiting to see if the other killers would be sentenced to death for the same crimes. They were. First, Shawna Forde, a disturbed beautician from Washington state who started her own border vigilante group, was sent to death row. And then Jason Bush, an alleged serial killer and pretend war hero,  was sentenced to die.

After a long trial, prosecutors  convinced the jury that Albert Gaxiola sicked Shawna Forde and Jason  Bush on Raul Flores because Raul was competition in the drug business.  So Albert is a killer.

Now Dave and I are  waiting to see if that same jury will sentence Albert to die, or to life in prison for the killings.

Me and Dave, we’re just talking and surfing the Internet.

Then we see  Albert’s lawyers rushing into the court room, and we pack up our  Macbook Pros and race after the lawyers.

We hightail it into the courtroom and set up our computers.  There’s a problem, the bailiff says. There’s a backup in the jail. The overworked deputies can’t get Albert up to the courtroom.

Gina Gonzalez and her family rush into the courtroom too. Gina is the mom of Brisenia Flores and the widow of Raul Flores, who Albert wanted dead. Her daughter and her husband were killed in front of her. She survived by playing dead on the floor after she was shot, and then engaging in a gun battle with the killers when they came back in to her bloody trailer to finish her off.

***

Here’s what you need to know about Albert Gaxoiola: He had been a friend of Gina and Raul.  Little Brisenia adored him. But he was a drug dealer and a drug user. His mom, now an obese woman with a pink walker, couldn’t care for him when he was little.  Too many men.  So Albert’s uncle and aunt raised him in California, and once he’d grown up, he’d sold mortgages there. Then he went back to see his mom, and started dealing drugs with her. And he got caught and served a light sentence. But instead of going back to his clean life in California, he settled in Arivaca, where I met him in 2008.

I was on assignment for a magazine. Writing about the border.

Albert and this guy were talking outside a feed store in Arivaca, just a few miles north of the Mexican border. Albert’s companion was an old hippie, I think his name was something like Stinky Steve.  They saw me, a reporter with a notebook, and Stinky Steve vamoosed.

Albert was very very guarded talking to me. He said he was of Basque heritage, that his family had been in the area for centuries, that his grandma sold tacos on the streets of Arivaca, that she died and he’d come home to attend her funeral, and that he was staying in Arivaca to get away from the California rat race.  One more thing: He  felt sorry for Mexican  immigrants hoofing through town. They just wanted a bit of the American dream, he said.

I didn’t know he was a drug guy, I just knew he was, as I told you before,  guarded.

And a year later, after he was charged with the Arivaca murders, I wondered why a guy so sympathetic to the plight of unauthorized Mexican immigrants would hook up with a Mexican-hating Minutewoman.

***

Today in the courtroom I think he looks a lot like I remember him. Not real tall. Broad-shouldered.  Dark-skinned. Prominent nose. Short black hair in a businessman’s cut.

But his legs are manacled and his hands are cuffed behind him. Once the deputy unlocks the cuffs, Albert puts on  his dark tie.  And his belt.

His packaging is entirely different from the other killers. Jason Bush looked like a tall lunatic on a serious dose of psychiatric medication.  Shawna Forde: A  beautician with delusions of grandeur.

But Albert, he still looks like a man who sold mortgages in California.

Judge John Leonardo enters the courtroom, says  the jury can’t reach a unanimous decision.

Albert looks happy. Maybe he will escape lethal injection. He jokes with his legal team.

Then everyone leaves for lunch, and Albert is cuffed and taken back into a holding cell.

***

Dave and I barely get our granola bars scarfed down before the jury reaches a verdict.

Same routine. We race into the courtroom.

Albert is brought in.

“Another circus, different clowns,” a deputy tells a  prosecutor.

A reporter talks about having witnessed a lethal injection execution.  The reporter says it is an easy death.

Not like the deaths of Brisenia Flores, who begged for her life before she was shot twice in the head. Not like the death of Raul Flores, who was shot multiple times and drowned in his own blood. Not like the death of part of Gina Gonzalez, who saw all this and must live with it for the rest of her life.

Albert puts on his belt. He puts on his tie. He rocks in his chair. Rock. Rock. Rock.

The jury sentences Albert to life for arranging the hit on Raul Flores, but it can’t reach a decision on whether Albert is guilty of killing Brisenia.

Gina’s relatives seem upset. Why life? Why no decision on killing Brisenia?

The prosecutor tries to explain: This is an okay verdict. It really is. And here’s why: He’s  gonna spend the rest of his life in prison, he’s gonna be in the yard. Killers of children have a hard time in the yard.  This won’t be an easy life for Albert.  He’s scared. So scared, he’s been telling people in prison he didn’t do anything bad. He’s been putting out feelers to protect himself. Everyone knows he’s coming.

It’s not going to be easy.

Dominque Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund who was widely viewed as a likely contender for the French presidency, faced sexual assault allegations by a chambermaid who says he attacked her in May. The maid, an immigrant from  Guinea, speaks a West African dialect called Fulani. The maid spoke Fulani to a mysterious West African friend who was incarcerated someplace in Arizona for drug charges, and the call was recorded, and this helped shatter  her credibility. (She also lied on her income tax form and her political asylum application, according to press reports.)  The reason the taped phone conversation shattered the maid’s cred,  at least in the eyes of newspaper reporters who talked to prosecutors,  is  that the maid said something to the effect of “Don’t worry I know what I am doing” and the inference was that she was going to scam DSK, who is enormously rich.

After word of the taped conversation got out, DSK, who on home arrest in cushy quarters in New York, was released. (He can’t leave the USA, though.) Prosecutors still haven’t decided whether they will pursue the case.

In other words, that phone call with the guy in Arizona was important.

I’m telling you all this so you’ll know why media outlets all over the USA were scrambling to get in touch with the mysterious West African friend, to get his side of the story. The problem, though, was that no one knew his name, or where he was incarcerated.

That is, until The Daily Beast found him. His name is Amara Tarawally, and he is an unauthorized immigrant from Sierra Leone, and in an exclusive interview with me, he claims  he’s the maid’s fiance. He was arrested in a pot bust in Chandler, Arizona, about a year ago. After serving time in jail, he was transferred to a detention center in Eloy, Arizona, pending a hearing on his immigration status.  But since his immigration case is based in New York, the case hasn’t been transferred out to Arizona yet and he’s in limbo. He told me even Sierra Leone would be better than detention because he’s been in the dark for so long, and feels cut off from the world. He also told me the phone call was taken completely out of context, that the maid is a beautiful woman who would never lie, and that he learned English from watching CNN, The Price is Right, and Deal or No Deal.

You can read the story here.

And here is an NBC interview I gave earlier today.

What do you think?

Did DSK assault the maid?

And how come just about every good news story has an Arizona connection?

Phoenix New Times columnist Stephen Lemons  recently engaged  in a delicious e-mail mano-a-mano with Brooke Buchanan, the spokesperson of Sen. John McCain, over the senator’s insistence that migrants caused some of Arizona’s recent  wildfires.

To back up her boss’s statements, Buchanan sent Lemons old  testimony and some newspaper clips indicating that unauthorized immigrants start wildfires.

But Lemons, aka  The Feathered Bastard, noted in  his column that Buchanan offered no documents indicating  immigrants actually started the wildfires now raging in southern Arizona, as her boss had contended.

I don’t know why McCain said what he said, but he undoubtedly scared a lot of people into fearing firebug Mexicans will incinerate the nation.

We all know what happens when Americans get scared — they pass knee-jerk  laws.

In Arizona, SB 1070 was passed after the 2010 killing of a borderlands rancher was blamed on a Mexican migrant. The rancher’s killing and the hysteria surrounding it scared Arizonans.  They thought SB 1070 would protect the border.

It had nothing to do with the border.

It had everything to do with driving out Mexicans.

Which drove down our economy.

And  get this — a year later, no one’s been charged with the rancher’s murder that prompted the passage of SB 1070.

The Feathered Bastard was right to point out that a white nationalist website V-DARE and border vigilante Glenn Spencer have hailed McCain’s ongoing insistence that wildfires on the border were caused by migrants.   I’d like to add one more website  to Lemons’ list — the apparently beleaguered nativist group ALIPAC, which linked  to a CNN story about the  McCain statement when it broke a few days ago.

Ironically, when ALIPAC  endorsed  J.D. Hayworth in the senate primary, McCain’s campaign called ALIPAC an “extreme group.”  McCain and ALIPAC have not gotten along in the past.

Maybe they will now.

(Quick full disclosure: I was on a New  Times staffer for 14 years. In 2010, I wrote an investigative package for my alma mater — on white-nationalist ties to groups fueling and funding the immigration debate. )

Russell Pearce, the controversial state senator who introduced Arizona’s famous immigration law, SB 1070, which makes it a state crime for unauthorized immigrants to set foot in Arizona, now faces a recall election.

I wrote about Pearce, the recall, and his controversial past for The Daily Beast a few months ago.

For years, Dems have virtually given Pearce his office by not investing money or viable candidates to run against him.

Pearce hails from a quirky East Mesa district, long stereotyped as a conservative Mormon stronghold that would elect  Pearce (a Mormon) every time.

But judging from the number of valid signatures stemming from the recall effort ( led in part by Chad Snow, also a  Mormon ) conservatives, moderates and liberals banded together to force a recall. The recall leaders did not focus on Pearce’s immigration stance, but rather on what they viewed as the failure of the Arizona Senate president to lead effectively.

Apparently, thousands of East Mesa voters agreed.

Signs of Pearce’s waning popularity were already evident — several rebel Republicans backed by  the powerful Arizona Chamber of Commerce joined with Dems to  squelch a series of Pearce-sponsored immigration laws, including  a birthright citizenship measure, earlier this year. The chamber said SB 1070 had been bad for business.

Expect to see money poured into this recall election by non-profits like Ban Amnesty Now, which is  already raising money to help Pearce win the recall election.

I wrote about Pearce, the non-profit genesis of his anti-immigrant message, and the effort to scare the hell out of  penny-pinched Americans  for Phoenix New Times in December, 2010.

Stay tuned.