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?

When will Democrats stand up for Democrats?

One thing that just drives me crazy is when partisan Democrats support Republicans when perfectly good Democrats are running for office or an appointed position. This is particularly mind-numbing when (a) Democrats hold the majority of the votes and (b) the person they're "supporting" is a hard-right Republican.

A case in point is the selection of a replacement for Phoenix City Councilman Greg Stanton. The City Council and the Mayor choose the replacement from a list of residents of the district who submitted their names for consideration. The Council then has about five days to make their choice. There are seven people who will make this selection, wanna guess how many are Democrats? More than enough.

So what's the problem? According to reports I'm hearing, they're all supporting former council Sal Diciccio: a self proclaimed, hard right wing Republican who supports Andy Thomas and Joe Arpaio and had the reputation of being "Mr. No." After he left the Council to run for Congress, those real estate developers whom DiCiccio roundly criticized while on the Council came out of the woodwork to give him him campaign contributions. He also became a developer himself.

He wrote an op-ed in 2007 --supporting-- Arpaio's wasteful lawsuits. In 1996, he supported the tobacco lobby's move to pass a state law making it tougher for cities to pass strict antismoking measures saying "kids will smoke anyway." In June of 2007 he wrote an op-ed in the Arizona Republic that implies that Hispanics are from a "corrupt culture."

And this is the guy the Democrats on the city council are endorsing?

WTF are they thinking?

So let me get this straight: people who want others to believe they're "moderate" and "thoughtful" are going to pick someone like Sal Diciccio for council and give a Republican with extreme views on law enforcement, sides with tobacco lobbyists and equates Hispanics with a "corrupt culture" an appointment to the council? They're willing to give THIS guy a leg up on the election in September when there are other qualified people up for the position? People like Dana Kennedy and Joanna Peters?

I just don't get it.