Hugh Hallman got attacked twice this week: First someone spent about $80,000 pointing out that

Hallman supports solar power and has opposed APS….golly, I wonder who would spend all that Dark Money to hit a Treasurer candidate who dared to op-

pose APS? Then Jeff DeWit released a video pur-porting to show Hallman installing a campaign sign

directly in front of a DeWit sign…but the video has been doctored. I’m curious if you can spot the trick.

Next, I interview Steve Montenegro and Darin

Mitchell who are running for re-election as the M&M

team. I was pleased to see that they were smart

enough not to adopt the M&M slogan.

Sex Lies and Chloroplast...let’s talk about some of

the more outrageous campaign signs.

Finally, State Legislators can prevent that new Glen-

dale Casino if they are willing to do this One Weird

Trick.

I hope that you enjoy this week’s edition.

Greg Patterson

Volume 2 Issue 5 EspressoPundit.com August 22, 2014

It’s almost over! Only a couple days before this year’s Primary election, then 90 days or so to the

General….and then only 730 days until the next General election. I can hardly wait.

In this week’s paper:

CD 1 Candidate Adam Kwasman announces that he has cancer and a Republic reporter

engages in a little “Karma Gloating.” Now that the sky hasn’t actually fallen, the Republic has taken a different approach to

attacking SB 1070 by claiming that a key provision has been “gutted”. Of course the paper previously pointed out that that provision had been upheld.

2 • For additional Commentary go to www.espressopundit.com • To subscribe go to

Has SB 1070 Really been “Gutted”?

Unspeakably Cruel: Here’s a Tweet from a Reporter

There's no way to read this tweet other than as a version of "What goes around comes around". Alltucker is implying the question "What does he think of Medicaid expansion now?" I refer

to this type of cruel response to someone's misfortune as "Karma gloating."

The media like to claim that SB 1070 has been

"gutted" by the courts. The most recent example

comes from the Republic's Daniel Gonzalez.

But SB 1070 has since been gutted by court rul-

ings,

Here's another example, this time from Michael

Kiefer.

The omnibus law known as Senate Bill 1070 was

largely gutted by a lawsuit brought by the U.S. De-

partment of Justice...

However, Gonzalez also provides us with a good

summary of what the original law did.

The 2010 law sought to require local police to play

a major role in immigration enforcement.

Gonzalez is right. If you ask the sponsors what they really wanted to accomplish with the law, they

will say that they wanted to eliminate the "Sanctuary City" policy in which local law enforce-

ment didn't inquire as to the status of people whom they had a reasonable suspicion were in the

country illegally.

Notice that Gonzalez uses the past tense: The

2010 law "sought..."

But that part of the law was UPHELD.

Here's a how the Republic covered it just over two

years ago:

Arizona immigration law: Supreme Court up-

holds key portion of Senate Bill 1070

The part ruled constitutional is among the most

controversial of the law's provisions. It requires an officer to make a reasonable attempt to determine

the immigration status of a person stopped, de-tained or arrested if there's reasonable suspicion

that person is in the country illegally.

So why would Gonzalez and Kiefer point to a provi-

sion that has been upheld and claim that the law had been "gutted"? Well, it's possible that they

simply don't know that the core of the law has been upheld and they are simply quoting things

that they have heard, or seen in the paper.

The other theory is that since the outcry over SB 1070 has died down and the world has not ended, they don't want to look like they cried wolf. After

all, the paper fomented hysteria about the law and now it simply sits on the books. Arizona hasn't

build gulags; companies are still coming here; the Super Bowl is still going to be played here. Life

goes on.

That has to frustrate the reporters who claimed

that the world was going to end. So instead of ad-mitting that they were playing the role of Chicken

Little....they claim that the disaster didn't occur

because the "law has been gutted."

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Let's see if you can spot the lies in these

statements. My guess is that you will miss the biggest lies of all.

Let's start with this Heather Carter

sign. There is serious contro-versy about whether Carter's

vote for Medicaid expansion constitutes a "Tax". The Re-

public's Bob Robb said that de-scribing the vote as a

“tax” increase was "eminently

fair." Mary Jo Pitzl abused her position as Republic "Fact

Checker" to declare that the “Tax” claim was "False". Ulti-

mately the Supreme Court will decide.

However, let's look at the

deeper message in the sign. The author is pointing

out that Carter is to the left of the rest of the

group. We can quibble about whether or not Carter's Medicaid expansion vote was a "Tax"

or an "Assessment", but she did actually cast that vote and the fundamental message of the

sign--that Carter is the moderate in a Conser-vative field is

true.

Now take a look at this sign that

Jeff Schwartz

has posted.

These state-ments are far

different than the Carter/Taxes

sign. Kavanagh is one of the

most vociferous opponents of

both Obamacare and Common Core. Further-

more, the votes that Schwartz is referring to are annual conformity bills that reconcile state

law with federal programs in which Arizona participates. Those bills are "must go" bills

that don't have any ac-tual policy changes in

them. Voting against them would be the height

of irresponsibility.

The Kavanagh signs--

unlike the Carter signs--fundamentally distort

Kavanagh's record by re-ferring to bills that don't

do what Schwartz claims they do. So while the

Carter sign can at best be considered an exaggera-

tion of her actual record, the Schwartz hit sign on

Kavanagh is simply a series of lies.

But there's a much bigger lie. Can you spot

it? Kavanagh is way to the right of Schwartz. Schwartz actually does support

Common Core and he certainly would have voted with Carter to expand Medi-

caid. The fundamental message of this sign is that Kavanagh is TOO LIB-

ERAL and that Schwartz is the Conser-vative choice. That is a huge

lie. That's not like simply misrepre-senting a candidate's vote, that's mis-

representing the whole race.

Sadly, the tactic of moderate/Liberal

candidates claiming that they are the real Conservative is becoming

increasingly common.

Check out the example on the next page….

Can you spot the Biggest Lie?

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Here is an example of a piece being used against Darin Mitchell. First, recall that even the

Republic's Laurie Roberts points out that Mitchell is the Conservative and Landis is the Moder-ate. In a column headlined "Will GOP voters send legislative tea drinkers packing?" Roberts

says:

(Darin Mitchell) ...is facing a strong challenge from the more moderate Diane Landis...

However, supporters of the "more moderate Diane Landis" are sending this mail piece to the

district. This is how some moderates beat Conservatives. They simply lie and claim that the Conservative is actually the Liberal. That dear readers is the BIGGEST LIE.

(Editor’s note: I have a full interview with Mitchell and his running mate Steve Montenegro

starting on page 10.)

The Biggest Lie Continued….

Looking For that Trending Bump that gives you the Traction to be Within Striking Distance.

Lately, I've been reading a lot about candidates getting a "Bump" or "Trending", "Gaining

Traction", "Gathering Momentum" or “surging” which puts them at that all important point...."Striking Distance." These words are all wonderfully evocative, but they are all

synonyms for one word.

That word is...let me think....oh yes...... "Losing."

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You may have seen the viral video called:

“DeWit Campaign response to Hugh Hallman sign

blocking denial.”

The video purports to show Hugh Hallman installing

one of his signs in front of a Jeff DeWit sign.

The video has been doctored, but if you haven't put

up a lot of signs, you might not catch it. You might want to take a minute and watch the video to see if

you can spot the trick. Or you can just look at the

screen shot below.

This is the point in the video when Hallman ap-

proaches the intersection so that he can install his

sign in front of DeWit’s sign.

Notice what he's carrying? That's right. Noth-ing. He doesn't have a sign in his hand and he's

not carrying poles or a pole pounder.

In the next seen, Hallman is shown working on one

of his signs that is, indeed, in front of a DeWit sign.

But how is he installing a sign? He didn’t bring a

sign, or poles …or tools when he crossed the street.

The answer is that he's not installing a sign. HE'S

TAKING A SIGN DOWN.

Once you realize that he's taking the sign down, the video makes a lot more sense. He doesn't have

tools to remove the poles or cut the wire, so he's

bending the poles back and forth until he can pull

them out.

The video then cuts to a still shot of Hallman stand-

ing on the corner appearing to admire his handy

work.

If you watch the YouTube video you might wonder why the video of Hallman working on the sign is fol-

lowed by a still shot of him admiring the sign. Why

not a few more seconds of video?

The reason is that the still shot was taken BEFORE

he started taking the sign down. By placing the still shot after the video, it makes it look like he's ad-miring the newly-installed sign. But in reality that

still shot was taken first and he's either wonder-ing who the heck put that sign up, or he's trying to

figure out how to take the sign down without any

tools.

The video is an elaborate trick to make people think that Hallman is installing signs in front of DeWit

signs. So how far does the trick go? My guess is that the same person who doctored the video is the

same person who installed the offending Hallman sign.

Hugh Hallman Caught EMPTY Handed

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Since the last article was about Hugh

Hallman, I hesitate to put this article

next, but Hugh has had a tough week.

APS's attacks have become more and

more outrageous, but the company's latest move is truly shocking. This is a

hit piece that APS has sent out through its surrogate non-profit "Free Enterprise Club." APS makes it clear that they are

attacking Hallman because he repre-sented solar clients in front of the Cor-

poration Commission.

Notice that I've circled the word "Advocating"? APS means "advocating" in the legal sense of the word. If you

read the "article" below the headline, you will see that APS mentions

Hallman's client by name and goes on to criticize that client's positions. Below you see a screen shot that I have taken

of the ACC proceeding in which Hallman took his positions against APS. I was an attorney in this

proceeding as well.

Let me be clear. APS is hitting Hallman because he represented a client at the ACC and that client's po-

sitions were contrary to APS.

Is the ACC going to tolerate this? Can APS publicly punish attorneys who represent parties that oppose

APS on key issues? Can you imagine the chilling

effect that this has on lawyers who are thinking of

taking APS on? How about parties that hold out on APS settlements. What happens to their law-

yers? Can a client get true representation if its at-torney is mentally calculating the cost of taking on

APS?

The Corporation Commission’s Legal and Hearing

Divisions work hard to ensure that parties are af-forded Due Process. Some parties are very sophis-

ticated and have a lot of resources while other par-ties are less so. The ACC provides a forum where less powerful and less sophisticated parties can

challenge massive utilities. If APS is going to use its resources to attack counsel for other parties

then it will be fundamentally altering the balance of fairness among parties that the ACC has attempted

to achieve.

There are a lot of really smart lawyers at the ACC. Surely someone is going to stand up and say that these type of tactics are unacceptable.

APS Attacks an ACC Intervenor

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The Republic's Linda Valdez is

advocating for the "Top Two" Primary that Paul Johnson

pushed--and voters overwhelm-

ingly rejected--a few years ago.

"Reformers" have been trying to

fix Arizona's elections for over a generation and all of their attempts have back-fired. That's why the legislature went from a large

group of moderates led by Burton Barr in the 1980s

to well...to what we have today.

Campaign finance reform, term limits, public fund-

ing and letting Independents vote in partisan pri-maries was supposed to move the legislature to the middle. All of those proposals backfired--with the

exception of letting Independents vote in Primaries

which has simply been meaningless.

Under Valdez's resurrected Johnson proposal, all

the candidates would run against each other in the Primary and none of them could use a party la-

bel. Valdez asks us to consider this scenario.

If you wonder how it would work, imagine if Ducey, Jones and the rest of the GOP candidates were in the primary race with DuVal. Imagine they all were

vying to win enough votes from right, left and cen-ter in order to be among the two candidates who

would move on to the general election.

OK. Now imagine this....Ducey and Smith are the two that survive the Primary and advance to the

General. How's that for reform?

Sure, if the Democrats want to concede that they can't win a statewide race in Arizona then they will want to stage these "Jungle" primaries because

they can ensure that the more moderate Republi-

can wins.

That's what will happen, but I don't think it's what

Linda has in mind.

Of course the results of her last set of reforms aren’t what she had in mind either.

Imagine This…. Self Debunking Story

The Republic’s Rebekah

Sanders recently wrote a story about Former Gover-

nor Fife Symington hosting a fundraiser for Rueben Gallego.

Check out this series of

statements:

Symington -- who resigned from office after

being convicted by a federal jury of bank and wire fraud -- donated $500 to Gallego in

April.

Then at the bottom of the story we have this.

Symington, whose conviction was eventually

overturned, remains active in political circles.

Seriously? It's a 20 year old conviction and

it was OVERTURNED! If the conviction was overturned then it doesn't exist. Why men-tion it?

Daddy, What’s a “Video Store”

Gannett has just announced that it's spinning

off its print division. Spinning off, casting off, whatever. The New York Times has an

interesting take on it.

So whose fault is it? No one’s. Nothing is

wrong in a fundamental sense: A free-market economy is moving to reallocate capital to its

more productive uses, which happens all the time. Ask Kodak. Or Blockbuster. Or the makers of personal computers. Just because

the product being manufactured is news in print does not make it sacrosanct or immune

to the natural order.

It’s a measure of the basic problem that many people haven’t cared or noticed as

their hometown newspapers have reduced staffing, days of circulation, delivery and cov-erage.

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Notice that the headline has "republican" with a

small "r". The US Constitution guarantees that every state will have a "republican" form of govern-

ment. That means we don't get a monarchy and we don't get direct democracy. The Supreme Court has said that the initiative process that's so common in

the western states is not a violation of the

"Guarantee" clause.

However, I believe that when you combine the ini-

tiative process with "voter protection" you have vio-lated the Guarantee Clause. That's because the

only way to change a "voter protected" law is by a direct vote of the people. The framers created a republic, not a direct democracy, and they guaran-

teed that the states would be republics as well. States that require that laws be amended by

the people are violating that guarantee.

In the past, the problem has been that the courts have ruled that Guarantee Clause cases are “political questions”. Which is a fancy term meaning

that the courts aren’t going to intervene.

Now that's starting to change. The folks in Colo-

rado have had their spend-ing constrained by the Tax-

payer's Bill of Rights (TABOR). They argue that their legislature--which re-

cently turned Democratic--should be allowed to spend

and tax using a simple ma-jority. The 10th circuit recently ruled that this is NOT a political question and the court will rule on

the merits of the case.

Here's a good summary from the Denver Post.

In Friday's 49-page decision, the 10th U.S. Circuit notes the "Supreme Court has held that members of

a state legislature may have standing to sue in order to vindicate the 'plain, direct and adequate interest

in maintaining the effectiveness of their votes.'

So why am I mentioning this now? To answer that question, we have to switch from talking about Den-

ver….to talking about Glendale.

That’s because the Tohono O'dham Tribe wants to

build a casino in Glendale even though that's hun-dreds of miles from their southern Arizona reserva-

tion. They are using loophole after loophole to get it done and more importantly, they are violating the

spirit, but not the letter, of the compacts that were

approved in 2002.

The tribe’s casino plan faces strong opposition...especially from other Val-

ley Tribes.

So what can be done? Well, the Com-pact that authorizes the extra ca-sino...is in statute. If the Legislature

wants to stop the Casino, they could

simply change the statute.

But the tribe will argue that the statute is "Voter

Protected." At that point the Legislature will point to the US Constitution and say that "Voter Protection"

violates the US Constitution.

Then the Tribe will say "But that's a Political Ques-

tion..."

And the Legislature will say..."Have you heard

about the TABOR case in Colorado..."

The Legislature has the authority to deny the Ca-

sino. The question is whether or not they have the political will.

Arizona Needs to me more “republican.”

It has the Authority, but

does the Arizona Legis-lature have the political will to prevent the Glen-dale Casino?

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GP: This may be an Arizona Political Report first, a

tag-team interview.

DM: Always nice to be making history. GP: Have I got this right? The M&M Team of Steve

Montenegro and Darin Mitchell, both State Repre-sentatives from LD13 which is a really big district

that I think stretches from Luke Air Force Base to California?

SM: Just about. We start east of Luke several miles, but it extends up to Wickenburg and all the

way down to Yuma. GP: Serious questions first, then fun ones. You

have a really interesting primary because where you usually see moderate or liberal Republicans on

the receiving ends of primary challenges from con-servative Republicans, you two are the conserva-

tives and you’re getting a moderate challenger. Tell me what that’s all about?

DM: I agree it is unusual, but Diane Landis chal-lenged us largely on the basis that we were both

conservatives and as far as she was concerned, all conservatives did was vote “No” on stuff and she

wanted to go and vote “Yes”. SM: I remember voting Yes on lots of good stuff,

like the Jobs Bill, tax cuts, Constitutional Carry, good pro-life and pro-school choice legislation, and

lots of bills like those, so I’m not entirely convinced that her given reason is genuine.

GP: What do you think is driving her challenge?

SM: I’m not sure if it is a what or a who? Her

consultants are running a number of candidates and about half are in open seat races while the

other half are challenging conservative incumbents like the two of us, David Gowan and David Stevens in LD14, and John Kavanagh in LD23.

DM: It’s worth noting that all of their clients sup-

port the Obamacare Expansion while every one of their targets opposed it. And I think their firm may

have also done lobbying for the expansion? GP: Well if your race is anything like Kavanagh’s, I

assume Landis is not running as pro-Expansion?

DM: No, and that’s one of the frustrating things about a race like ours, because if you had a race between a conservative and a liberal and they each

championed their position and made an intellectual case for it, then the voters would probably be

thrilled by having such a high quality campaign and having two distinct choices. But they don’t do that, they campaign like they are conservatives as

well.

SM: Or worse, they attack the real conservatives by claiming that they are liberals. I think that method of attack is standard for the left. They

know they can’t sell their product so they try to fool the voters into thinking that right is left and

vice versa. So in a race like ours, where we are both Heroes of the Taxpayer and have awards and top ranks from pro-taxpayer groups, we get at-

tacked as being bad for taxpayers. We’re great on border issues and are endorsed by Sheriff Joe and

Russell Pearce, yet they’ll attack us as being weak on border issues.

Continued on next page….

An Interview with Steve Montenegro and Darin Mitchell

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GP: I wrote an Espresso Pundit post about a mailer that an outside group did attacking you.

They had this bright yellow text saying Darin Mitchell Supports Amnesty on one side and Mitchell Is Too Liberal For Arizona below.

DM: I saw the post and I appreciated it. I was

actually the #1 ranked most conservative mem-ber of the State House, and that mailer claimed I was too liberal? I mean, what can you do

when they just make stuff up without even the slightest shred of truth? And the firm that pro-

duced that mailer always backs the least conser-vative candidate and they back a lot of open-border, pro-amnesty candidates. So they lie

about me to make voters vote against me, and no one in their offices notices or cares that the fic-

tional persona they’ve created is actually identical to any number of their actual clients.

GP: So what’s the plan? How do you beat it?

SM: There is an expression that the truth has only just left your lips but the lie is already twice

around the room. So it is a challenge. You have to get to the voters on a personal basis and ex-plain the race to them. Once you’ve done that, it

doesn’t matter how many lies they are exposed to, they’ll know what is really going on.

DM: I think voters are also quite skeptical of these hit pieces and negative attacks. I think we

get more mileage out of our mailers that detail the job we’ve done, the awards and recognition

from conservative groups that we have received, and how we kept our campaign promises and will continue to do so.

SM: And let’s not forget the power of volunteers.

We’ve been blessed with a lot of great ones.

GP: Now I know the Governor endorsed just your opponent. What are your thoughts on that?

DM: She’s endorsing the most liberal candidate in every race, so you try to recognize it as confirma-

tion that you ran as a conservative and you clearly stayed true to your principles.

SM: I was somewhat disappointed, only because I’ve been there for the same six years she has,

and we both inherited a real mess that we all worked together to get out of. And along the way we had some really tough votes, and I’d vote with

her on those tough votes. So I was a bit disap-pointed that six years of good votes were worth

nothing to her compared to the one single issue of Expansion and, maybe Common Core as her sec-ond issue.

GP: You both have been campaigning together

for so long, is it like being born twins where you finish each other’s sentences?

SM: Oh, I’d probably say –

DM: No? (laughing) GP: Thanks guys!

Montenegro and Mitchell—Stealth Attacks

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