Phoenix City Council Turns To The Right

This past week the Phoenix City Council chose a replacement for Greg Stanton, who left the council to go work for Terry Goddard. I argued here that they ought to chose a Democrat instead of a right-win Republican (Sal Diccicio) who supports racial profiling, Joe Arpaio and Andy Thomas and has strange ideas on economic development and is bed with the very developers he criticized while on the council previously. The council had the choice of Dana Kennedy or Sal Rivera and a couple other Democrats. Why give the Republican a leg up in the election?

So who did the Council select? Sal Diccicio.

Apparently, the vote for Sal Rivera was tied 4-4, but for some reason Mayor Gordon switched his support to DiCiccio and he was elected 5-3. So those voting for the right-wing of the Republican Party were Mayor Phil Gordon and City Council members Thelda Williams, Peggy Neely, Maria Baier, and Claude Mattox. Those who voted against DiCiccio were Tom Simplot, Michael Nowakowski and Michael Johnson.

This is a great step backwards and I just don't see how this improves the city's ability to deal with a down economy when you chose someone who simply doesn't understand economic development or the impact that reductions of services impacts citizens. Phoenix needed practical leadership and it got an ideologue.

That's progress?