Lesko wins CD-8 GOP Special Primary

With 100% of the precincts reporting, the unofficial figures are:
Debbie Lesko:               35,77%  —  25, 508 votes

Phil Lovas:                   23,88%   —  17,031  votes   

Steve Montenegro:       23.82%   —  16,987  votes

Montenegro, originally considered by many observers to be the front-runner, was irreparably damaged by recent revelations of his sexting with a legislative intern. A married pastor and former District Representative for U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, who resigned his congressional seat in December, Montenegro was endorsed by Franks — who remains popular in the district. Montenegro also took hits for his support of the National Popular Vote, which would have put Hillary Clinton in the White House.

Phil Lovas, originally appointed to the state legislature, attempted to use his early endorsement of President Trump to gin up support for his own candidacy, but fell far short.

Conservative Lesko, a state senator who served as Senate President Pro-Tempore, and carried the endorsement of former Gov. Jan Brewer, held her impressive lead over 11 challengers from the earliest reporting tallies. Congressional District 8 is a GOP stronghold. It’s highly unlikely liberal Democrat victor Hiral Tipirneni with 21,703 votes, will carry the solid red district in the April 24, 2018 Special General Election.

AZ CD-8 Special Primary Election results here

Results for the Special Primary Election in Congressional District 8 will be available tonight after 8:00 p.m. Twelve Republicans and two Democrat candidates are on the ballot, each hoping to be their party’s standard bearer in the race to fill the congressional seat previously occupied by Republican U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, who resigned in December.

The Special General Election for the West Valley district will be held April 24, 2018.

Polls close tonight at 7 p.m., and continually updated results will be available after 8 p.m. Many early ballots have already been cast.

 CLICK HERE for the latest numbers.

McCain ‘dossier’ collusion: The story you won’t read in the AZ Republic

Today is a day to pay special attention to the news, both local with the special CD 8 primary election and national — though the national news has a local component up to his gnarly neck in anti-Trump deceit.

John McCain, staying out of D.C. since July when his practiced theatrics in voting down the “skinny repeal” of Obamacare made Democrats rejoice, is suffering from what his doctors describe as an aggressive form of  brain cancer, We suspect even if was as healthy as a horse, he’d invoke any excuse to remain as far away as possible from the exploding contrivances against President Trump, who McCain worked hand-in-glove to defame as he attempted to remove his former rival from the Oval Office — something McCain long coveted but never attained.

David J. Kramer, a former State Department official and close associate of Sen. John McCain, who was the director of the McCain Institute, has invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify in connection with questions from the House Intelligence Committee about the discredited anti-Trump dossier’s Russian sources. The Fox News article is headlined, “McCain associate takes Fifth on Trump dossier questions.”

The Daily Caller reports that in a Dec. 19 interview with the committee, Kramer said that he had information about some of the sources of information in the dossier, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele and financed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Kramer gathered the information in November 2016, after traveling to London to meet with Steele. Kramer and McCain first learned of the dossier earlier that month after meeting with an associate of Steele’s.

After the London meeting, Steele provided a copy of the dossier to Kramer with instructions to share it with McCain. The no doubt gleeful senator then hand carried a copy of the document to then-FBI Director James Comey during a Dec. 9, 2016, meeting.

McCain, doing the Democrat Party’s bidding on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, is likely relieved his serious illness has occurred in time to save him from being deposed, charged and found guilty of treacherous collusion on this massive level, leaving what he regards as his “legacy” on the trash heap of Arizona history. This story, which the McCain worshipping Arizona Republic newspaper ignores, is not going away. In fact, it is intensifying.

But you’d never know that here in Arizona where the liberal newspaper routinely derides President Trump and joins ambitious Democrat Mayor Greg Stanton heralding the foolish renaming of the newly renovated Terminal 3 at Sky Harbor International Airport after McCain, who crashed three jets while a navy pilot,

Gun owners, NRA remain resolute in face of misaimed backlash

Amid all of the negativity illogically lodged against the NRA in the wake of the horrific Florida school shooting, another Crossroads of the West gun show took place at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix Saturday and Sunday. The vast area was packed with dealers and overflowing with purchasers, including many families, with children in tow, who understand the importance of our Second Amendment rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution by our nation’s Founders.

The shooting, perpetrated by a mentally deranged former student, highlights the need for follow-up on obvious concerns since deputies had been called to the family home of Nikolas Cruz 23 times. The FBI was alerted to him months earlier. His Internet postings showing him posing with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle and boasting about plans to shoot up a school, should have raised red flags about the threat he posed. The recently expelled 19-year-old, who began introducing himself as a “school shooter,” has been charged with 17 counts of murder perpetrated against classmates on Valentine’s Day. Despite repeated warnings, authorities took no decisive action. When the volley of gunshots sounded from within the school, the armed resource officer chose not  to enter the building.

Though years of warnings were ignored, backlash has irrationally focused against the National Rifle Association. The NRA is a pro-Second Amendment organization that protects the rights of Americans to defend themselves.

Under political pressure from the hard left, some corporations that have long offered discounts and benefits to NRA members have begun peeling away, though many remain in effect. This is the complete statement on corporate partnerships offered by the organization, which includes these words:

“……some corporations have decided to punish NRA membership in a shameful display of political and civic cowardice.  In time, these brands will be replaced by others who recognize that patriotism and determined commitment to Constitutional freedoms are characteristics of a marketplace they very much want to serve.

Let it be absolutely clear. The loss of a discount will neither scare nor distract one single NRA member from our mission to stand and defend the individual freedoms that have always made America the greatest nation in the world.”

Seeing Red AZ encourages readers to show their support for the NRA. Join today.

Elvia Diaz: Sets poor example for Lenten conduct

Those who observe the 40 days of Lent leading up to Easter focus on introspection. Some give up a specific behavior as an exercise in sacrificial self-denial.

 The Arizona Republic’s Elvia Diaz has written a column on her desire to find common ground with people she normally disagrees with as part of her series spanning Lent.

She chooses as her antagonist, Republican Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio. How nice, it seemed, that committed leftie Elvia Diaz wants to make amends with him. Yet despite her stated desire to treat the fiscal conservative decently for the holiday, she describes DiCiccio in less than glowing terms, referring to “his methods of challenging his liberal colleagues as boorish, bordering exaggerations, or truth twisting, and bullying political rivals and journalists when they disagree with him.”

If this negative spew is indicative of her self-reflection, she’s missed the mark by a mile, showing herself incapable of examining her own thoughts and motives.  Diaz also displays her animus toward the word “liberal,” preferring to hide behind the term “progressive,” favored by liberals who want to deny who they actually are. Could she be a “self-loather?”

She does admit that she and DiCiccio have no common ground, defining him as appealing to “tea partiers” — a term rarely used by most conservatives these days. She also disingenuously describes him as “a diehard Trump supporter and buddy of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio.” Is she exhibiting early onset memory loss or simply choosing not to recall that DiCiccio ripped Arpaio in the Ahwatukee Foothills News, telling the newspaper in 2016 that neither he, nor anyone in his family, would be voting for Arpaio.

Her use of the phrase “pro-immigrant rights activists” is duplicitous at best, since she’s discussing illegal aliens, who should have no supporters. This was used in the context of a Trump rally in Phoenix when police employed tear gas to disperse the crowd after the rally ended. The “activists  refused to let the issue go,” she writes, demanding, “among other things, that Phoenix ban President Trump from using city-owned buildings and police officers.”  

Admitting that she “doesn’t throw a blanket endorsement of the work of our men and women in blue” as DiCiccio does, Diaz says, “DiCiccio isn’t wavering and neither am I.”

In summation, after giving him a scathing review, she schizophrenically concedes, “I find DiCiccio respectful, attentive and willing to talk, though we often disagree.”

What happened to the lying boor she described at the beginning of her peculiar article? This must be Diaz’ concession to Lent with which she began her rant.

McCain crony rips Trump’s CPAC speech

Three day conservative conference draws huge crowd, top conservative speakers

Steve Schmidt’s checkered career includes elevating political RINOs and even worse, John McCain, who makes Republicrats appear mainstream.

Here’s Schmidt, the top adviser, message developer, and strategy wizard behind McCain’s 2008 failed presidential campaign, as he appeared Oct. 2017 on far-left MSNBC where he is employed as a political analyst, absurdly claiming, “John McCain has spent every hour of his adult life in service to this nation“…..and has “lit a torch for future political leaders.” The use of the past tense bizarrely sounds like a eulogy though the obstinate and vengeful McCain is still above ground.

Far outside the prism of reality, Schmidt actually compares McCain to George Washington. It would not be surprising to learn he has an altar erected to deity McCain that he kneels before as he starts each day. His Twitter page is topped by wild mavericks, no doubt another nod to his calamitous client, who has long used that analogy as a cover for his liberalism while shrewdly running as a Republican in the red state of Arizona. Carpetbagging into the state following his marriage to Cindy Lou Hensley, he was advised in 1982 by the then-powerful Phoenix 40 that he could not hope to replace retiring House Minority Leader John Rhodes, an ethical conservative congressional leader, if he ran as a Democrat as he was poised to do. 

Schmidt’s latest mantra is that “it’s apparent to everybody that Trump is unfit for office,” conspiratorially stated on the Trump-hating network. For emphasis, he adds, “They say it privately in the bars.”

When Schmidt’s out of the bars where he appears to conduct his private polling, he tweets vicious anti-Trump attacks, recently blasting President Trump’s CPAC speech that won acclaim from conservatives, who he refers to as “a crowd of cheering extremists….the heirs of the Know-Nothing’s and nativists that have always plagued us.”

Using his apparently favorite bar analogy again, Schmidt says this of President Trump’s speech:

“This speech at CPAC is demagogic, vapid, intellectually dishonest and just plain old fashioned idiotic.  If someone delivered this speech from the end of a bar most people would think that person was an imbecile.”

And with that bit of wisdom, we can imagine political hack Steve Schmidt calling out in a boozy slur, “Schet up ‘nother roun, Joe. Thish one’s on me!”

Tweets by SteveSchmidtSES

Dimwit Pelosi: To curb flow of illegals,“Mow the grass!”

Border fence is unnecessary

Democrat House Minority Leader Nancy Peloisi has never been regarded as a brain trust. Brain rust is a more fitting description for the far left, disconnected from reality (video montage) California Congresswoman who will turn 78 next month. She’s exhibited her appalling lack of mental acuity on numerous occasions over the years.

When President Trump instituted massive tax cuts and economic reforms that put significant money in the pockets of American workers, multimillionaire Pelosi hypocritically called it “crumbs“ saying, “God never intended one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth while others live in abject deadening poverty,” citing what she said was a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King. Pelosi is routinely listed as one of the wealthiest members of congress, is reportedly worth approximately $100 million, according to this account in the Washington Examiner.

During her recent political stop in Phoenix, charlatan Pelosi outdid herself at a town hall by exposing her lack of basic knowledge about the border where Arizona abuts Mexico. The desert isn’t a park with lush green grass, though she suggests that mowing the grass would be a better solution to curb the invasion of illegals than building a wall — since they would no longer be able to hide in the tall grass.

Arizonans have heard such absurdities before. When Republicrat Christine Jones was a candidate for Arizona governor, she cluelessly spoke of Mexicans swimming across the Rio Grande to enter our state. The problem for Jones is the fact that the Rio Grande is not in Arizona.

Facts can be such pesky things for ignorant politicians.

AZ CD 8: political reality show within days of election

Solid red congressional district suddenly plagued by blunderous candidates

Wednesday was a full news day — of the wacky variety.  First there was the report of candidate Steve Montenegro, who resigned his state legislative seat in mid-December to run for Congress, exchanging steamy text messages with a legislative staffer while he was still a state lawmaker. A pastor and former Trent Franks’ district representative — carrying high level endorsements including Franks, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz — is now being counseled to end his campaign. These are his positions on the issues.

Debbie Lesko, regarded as the front-runner in the crowded GOP field is facing accusations of funding Conservative Leadership for Arizona (CLA), a super PAC endorsing her candidacy with an infusion of $50,000 from her Senate reelection campaign fund. The intrigue-o-meter is reaching epic levels since it appears the group (CLA) is a construct of her strategist.

The Special Primary Election to fill the congressional seat from which U.S. Rep. Trent Franks resigned is Feb. 27, 2018.

Early Trump supporter Phil Lovas, who has been running behind the two now troubled front-runners, stands to benefit from their missteps. His claims of imposing term limits resonate with voters, but have no realistic expectation of coming to fruition, since no incumbents will vote in favor of their own political demise or to end the pensions they’ve earned, another Lovas campaign pledge.

Former Corporation Commissioner Bob Stump is increasingly well positioned as the Arizona congressional train abruptly switches gears.

Montenegro, Lesko, Lovas and Stump all identify as political conservatives.

The list of candidates is here. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) provides the candidate and committee viewer here.

Stay tuned.

A morning radio treat

You can listen to Arizona’s all time favorite radio talk show host this morning from 8 to 10 am AZ time  — both today and tomorrow (Thursday and Friday) — as JD Hayworth appears on WBT, Charlotte, North Carolina. 

Listen Live by clicking here.

Leftist AZ Republic hammers conservative U.S. Rep. Biggs

In campaign mode, liberal agenda moves front and center

 When the Arizona Republic, an undeniably left-wing newspaper endorsed ethically challenged Hillary Clinton for President of the United States in 2016, the editorial board went to great lengths to characterize the endorsement of the scandal-plagued Democrat as an anomaly. The board collectively claimed it was the first time in the newspaper’s history they veered into liberal land. “Despite her flaws,” the ‘Never Trumpers’ wrote, “Clinton is the superior choice.”

The Hill reported that in the final national newspaper endorsement count, Clinton led by 57, to Trump’s 2 — proof that endorsements mean nothing. The only endorsement that matters is that of the voters on Election Day. In a decisive vote against the Jeb! Bush supporting GOP establishment, Trump swept the Electoral College. He also won formerly solid Democrat states. Hillary’s declaration that she was going to shut down coal mining in West Virginia, badly backfired. Traditionally blue states Michigan and Wisconsin joined a host of others that went for Trump.

The Republic’s decidedly leftward lurch is evident with the in-tandem efforts of columnists EJ Montini and Laurie Roberts engaging in unconcealed cronyism with cartoonist Steve Benson, as all ferociously rip the president.

The latest tactic is to undermine Arizona’s strong congressional conservatives with incendiary language in a concerted effort to destroy them. 

SRAZ recently bared the vile effort to undermine U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (AZ CD-4).  The editorial was headlined, “Paul Gosar is a disgrace to Arizona.”  It began with these words, “ Republicans in Congressional District 4 need to find somebody to defeat U.S. Rep Paul Gosar in the primary. His smash mouth style brings serial embarrassment to our state.”

Who are they kidding? The dentist turned congressman makes Republicans who are paying attention proud. Conservatives usually pay extra close attention, and they have no reason to peel away from the popular representative of the people. . 

Now the target is U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs (AZ CD-5), former state senate president. Marginal Montini shovels what he views as the first load of escremento, calling Congressman Biggs a “Trump toady,” and maligning him for winning the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes. That prize allowed Biggs to retire from the practice of law and enter the political arena, a move which has greatly benefited Arizonans. Leftist ideologue Montini, a dependable lap dog for the radical mindset of those who pay his salary, has accomplished nothing to which he can point with pride since he was first hired in 1979.

Count on the fact that the newspaper known as the Arizona Repulsive is just warming up. Election season is approaching. But as the failing newspaper is gasping its last breaths it has been rejected by those who were touted as keeping it on course. We recently wrote, “AZ Republic becomes an orphan as both mommies split,” detailing its abandonment.