No, Rob Haney, the former chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Committee (MCRC) isn’t “technically” dead.
But he might as well be.
Former MCRC Chair Rob Haney
One of the things Rob Haney is famous for (working with Tom Husband, the MCRC Chairman who recruited him and later worked for him as MCRC Executive Director) is learning how the establishment kept taking control of the party (basically recruiting PCs, both “real” & “paper”) and turning that same tool against them.
Regardless of many PCs he personally recruited (I’ve heard numbers ranging from 500 to 5000) the fact is he built a machine. And by the time the 2011 Maricopa County Meeting took place (after the Tea Party Revolution) I’m told upwards of 80% of the PCs attending were “tea party”.
Something happened during the 2011-2012 election cycle though. Maybe he got mad at AZGOP Chair Tom Morrissey because he (Morrissey) wouldn’t let him be State Chairman by proxy. Maybe he got mad at the Tea Party. Ultimately the why of it doesn’t matter.
Because in the fall of 2012, going into the winter 2013 AZGOP Statutory Meeting, Rob Haney endorsed Robert Graham for State Chair.
The effect of this was to immediately give people “permission” to ignore (or at the very least minimize) all the evidence that was presented to them about what kind of chairman Robert Graham would be. It allowed former Senator Russell Pearce (still smarting from his recall election maybe?) and Sheriff Arpaio and many other county and state party officers to endorse. Granted, Graham’s opposition in 2013 was fairly disorganized, but still. . .
And after 2 years of a Robert Graham chairmanship Haney could have come out, said he made a mistake and endorsed Lori Urban. Instead he publicly stayed silent, which again gave cover to Pearce, Arpaio, and others to betray the principles they said they believed.
This past Saturday was the result.
And so I close today with this question to Mr. Rob “Nero” Haney, former MCRC Chairman.
What tune did you play on your fiddle while the MCRC and AZGOP burned?
UraPC Patriot
Edited Feb 17, 2015: I’d like to thank my volunteer proofreaders/editors for noticing the spelling error in Sen. Pearce’s name. [link to come]
Wednesday (21 January 2015) the Arizona Republican Party Legislative District 25 held a forum/debate for those seeking elected office within the party. As things usually go when a campaign has taken a nasty turn, at times the discussion got “spirited”.
Thursday afternoon and evening a series of emails went out which caused quite the firestorm on Facebook. It appears these emails came from a large number of people and went to state committeemen, executive committeemen, and to people who are in the political media; like Frosty Taylor of the MCRC Briefs Newsletter; http:\\archives.mcrcbriefs.org.
Original Email: LD25 Debate AJ LaFaro comes Unhinged
Unfortunately for the author/spammer, the only real effect of the emails was to seemingly give a number of people (who are already in the opposing camp this election) an excuse to frolic madly around on Facebook for a while.
And then it didn’t take long before responses and analysis came through. Not the least of which was a response from Chairman of LD25 Ian Murray who hosted / MC’d the debate. Three responses were published in the MCRC Briefs this morning and are copied below.
Apparently the emails (and the vitriolic push poll attacking Lori Urban) were too much for the editors of the Seeing Red AZ blog, who formally endorsed the Lori Urban slate this morning.
This Evening Briefs Received Multiple Copies of an e-mail claiming “former Maricopa County GOP Chairman and candidate for First Vice Chair of the State Republican Party A.J. LaFaro went completely unhinged during his scheduled remarks from the floor” at the LD25 candidate’s forum. It further charged that LaFaro admires former Dem President Bill Clinton maricopa-republican
LD25 Chairman Ian Murray Response To The Anonymous E-Mail: “I had this email forwarded to me by PCs in my district. The first thing I noticed was the email was anonymous and I feel very exaggerated.
AJ was discussing the resolution that he submitted supporting a closed primary, an issue he feels passionate about. While AJ was spirited, he was not unhinged. Gary Pierce did object to one of his statements. Gary had his say and AJ continued his remarks. Afterwards Jeni White, who was on the Resolutions committee, asked for a chance to discuss the Resolutions process and I allowed her to speak just prior to the closing statements.
If I thought that AJ was unhinged, I would have stopped him from continuing.
If multiple copies of the email have been sent to you, look to see the names they are from. The one that was forwarded to me was from “Derwille Zurmacht” from the German philosopher Nietsche. It means “will to power, at least that is what another of my PC said.
My thought are is that if you are going to write an opinion piece and sent it out, at least have the courage to take ownership.” — Ian Murray Ian@designedforlife.com’
Web Master John Strasser’s Research On The Anonymous E-Mail Reveals: “Over the course of a few hours (many arriving within minutes of each other) we received a number emails about AZGOP 1st Vice-Chair Candidate AJ LaFaro’s debate performance Wednesday night. Some were forwarded to us, some came directly. The seven (7) identical emails I examined all had different names yet had surprisingly similar gmail addresses.
Specifically:
Joseph Smith (azdbacks1897@gmail.com)
Porter Rockwell (azdbacks1877@gmail.com)
Derwille Zurmacht (azdbacks1977@gmail.com)
Friedrich Lincoln (azdbacks1947@gmail.com)
Anonymous (azdbacks51@gmail.com)
Soren Derwille (azdbacks1937@gmail.com)
Silence Dogood (azdbacks1927@gmail.com)
“While I can fully understand why people wish to remain anonymous online or offline (Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich comes to mind) the pattern in email addresses and names points to only 1 thing. That one person (this is ‘so’ obviously the work of 1 person) is trying desperately to create the illusion that a large scale popular movement (of D-Backs fans??? Really?) has risen up to smite AJ LaFaro down – hopefully by fooling the search engines and certain gullible PCs on Facebook and Twitter.
“Instead he/she appears to be nothing more than a ragtag laundry basket of sock-puppet gophers popping from their imaginary burrows in a pale imitation of AstroTurf.”
LD19 PC Joseph Hobbs, who received one the “Porter Rockwell” e-mails writes: “Greetings Porter – very pitiful ad hominem attack on a dependable conservative who has displayed great vision and leadership – worked 16 hour days in The Trenches For Our GOP Fighting The Democrat/Communist/Marxists. I am deeply offended by your remarks. You did not cite any outcomes from your ‘research’ where you were able to determine ‘that A.J. LaFaro does not have the best interest of the Party at heart.’ During these pitiful times of stress when our Republic is at the tipping point, when we are looking for Americans who will stand up to SHOUT that they believe in the Greatness of America, believe in our Republican Party Platform, that they believe in the Miracle of our Constitution as it was influenced by GOD – some like you are not connecting the dots sir. Please introduce yourself to me at the state meeting – I would like to see what you look like in person.
Again, you can read those articles and more at the MCRC Briefs website at:
Ardith Hildebrant, candidate for Treasurer in the AZGOP’s upcoming January 24th election, has filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against Chairman Robert Graham and the Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP).
The complaint documents dozens of entries and transactions that question the compliance with federal and state campaign finance disclosure laws.
Press Release: FEC complaint filed against Robert Graham and the AZGOP
Hildebrant who’s career expertise is in accounting, operational and internal auditing, and legal research related to internal audits, said “Serious violations of campaign finance laws have been raised throughout Robert Graham’s administration. That’s the main reason I felt compelled to run for Treasurer”. Hildebrant added “now we have the evidence after weeks of investigation and review”.
Robert Graham and Timothy Lee, the Treasurer for the AZGOP have been asked repeatedly to explain what they have been doing; however, they have refused.
This is not the first time Robert Graham and Timothy Lee have been implicated in campaign finance law violations. Timothy Lee was the AZGOP Treasurer of record when the FEC conducted a full audit of the AZGOP and his activities from 2009 through 2010. Robert Graham was the President of Americans for Responsible Leadership (ARL) when California’s Fair Political Practices Commission indicted and fined ARL and Sean Noble’s Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR) a record FEC complaint filed against Robert Graham and the AZGOP $1 million for money laundering tens of millions of dollars.
The current dark and dirty money campaign finance violations are too numerous and complicated to describe in this release, but appear to be far more serious than Graham’s and Lee’s previous campaign finance activities and violations.
Tom Morrissey, former Chairman of the AZGOP said, “Graham’s and his supporters’ hypocrisy is stunning. They seem to be saying because they are the establishment, crony capitalists and wealthy special interest groups that campaign finance regulations and the law don’t apply to them. The FEC should make it crystal clear to them that the law does apply to them”. Morrissey went on to say “these egregious actions are not victimless violations”.
Hildebrant urged “Robert Graham, Timothy Lee and the AZGOP to come clean and submit to a voluntary full audit by the FEC”.
The treasurer has a watchdog role over all aspects of financial management, working closely with the other members of the Executive Committee to safeguard the finances of the AZGOP and its contributors. The treasurer of a political committee registered with the FEC is legally responsible for that committee’s compliance with the federal campaign finance laws.
Hildebrant said “it’s imperative that anyone interested in running for treasurer of any organization make sure they audit the books first”.
The amazingly funny Jeff Dunham has some new competition it seems. And as a diehard fan of the Matrix movies I love the shout out.
For those who don’t know; Jeff Dunham is a ventriloquist, Peanut and Achmed are two of his characters. Whenever he’s on the comedy channel you HAVE to see his show. And if you can catch it live even better.
Think about it. Go get the state and federal election reports and look up who the donors are (follow the money) for both the state party and the politicians.
Remember as Boss Tweed once said, “I don’t care what they write, my people can’t read. But those damn cartoons are forever”. OK, he may have said something like that (I’m working from memory here).
I leave you for now with one of the classics that brought down the corruption that poisoned the party:
Thomas Nast (1840-1902). The Power Behind the Throne “He Cannot Call His Soul His Own.” 1870. Museum of the City of New York. 99.124.7.
For the past 2 years Robert Graham has done everything he could to belittle his predessessor (hmm…what other chief executive does that???); constantly claiming how much debt he was left with, the shabby condition of the headquarters building, etc. It’s as if he can’t help himself. Well today (16 January 2015), Tom Morrissey hit back. You can find the article here:
Now as a State Committeeman these past two years, I’ve watched and wondered. Really Robert?? Things were THATbad?
So over the past 2 years, I asked the people who were there with Morrissey, especially in the beginning, what happened. I got an earfull. And they basically all agreed with what Morrissey says in his article there. Were there issues during his tenure? Sure. But Graham inhereted an organization in much better shape than Tom Morrissey did.
Why don’t you ask them? I’m sure every one of the people who worked with Morrissey would be happy to talk with you like they did me. Granted, I think all of them have come out in support of Lori Urban…still they’ll tell you (in exhaustive detail) what they saw.
In fact, all have publically endorsed a candidate EXCEPTLaddie Shane. Hey Laddie, wanna chime in with whomever YOU are supporting???
The Real AZGOP 