‘Sound-bite’ Steve

When you don’t have the qualifications, when you don’t have ideas or solutions, when you don’t have broad support of law enforcement, firefighters, teachers and other pillars of our community, when you haven’t visited the district and made yourself accessible to constituents, what do you do?

 My opponent’s answer: Go dirty; lie, spew political rhetoric and hope the mud sticks.

Integrity in public office is absolutely imperative. My opponent has shown himself to a person who will say and do anything, including lying, to get elected. I’d like to set the record straight.

It’s a blatant falsehood that I missed 30 percent of the Senate votes. Steve Smith has not done his homework. Look at the 2010 2nd regular session legislative vote summary and you will see that my voting record is at 91 percent. The votes I did miss were March 8, when I had an excused absence from the Senate President and traveled to Washington D.C. to represent Arizona and my district.

Interestingly enough, I was there as to help honor Women’s History Month – but perhaps my opponent doesn’t think women’s suffrage is important. His campaign signs suggest rolling the clock back to 1776, when women were NOT allowed to hold public office and NOT allowed to vote.

To my opponent’s lie that I don’t support fighting illegal immigration – Again my voting record is public and shows that I voted for bills that mandated employer sanctions that require employers to be punished for knowingly hiring undocumented workers.

I voted for legislation that enabled law enforcement to go after human smuggling cartels and the immigrants who conspired to come into this country illegally. I voted for making the use of a drop house a class 4 felony and expanded the definition of human smuggling.

I have many years of votes in support of fighting illegal immigration. Again – I assert that SB1070 did not go far enough. It did nothing to secure the border, gave no resources to law enforcement to fight the human smuggling and drug cartels, or to protect our communities. My support of law enforcement has resulted in them endorsing my candidacy over my opponent’s.

To his false claim that I supported the President’s healthcare reform bill  – it should cause voters great concern that he is not able to distinguish between state and federal legislation, and who gets to vote for what. This is very elementary. I did not support the healthcare bill – no one in the Arizona State Legislature did – because it is a federal bill.

So in the end, when you don’t have solutions about how to get Arizona out of a billion-dollar deficit, or how to ensure that our state is no longer ranked 50th in public school funding, or how to attract economic development, and you haven’t been out and visited our vast district and its diverse families, businesses and communities, you do what “Sound-bite Steve” does.

Go dirty, lie, spew political rhetoric and hope the mud sticks.

Our district deserves better.