Liberal ACLU Democrat candidate for County Attorney Tim Nelson announced yesterday that he has a few prosecutors supporting him, in an attempt to deflect attention from the fact that a disturbingly large number of his contributors are criminal defense attorneys. What is interesting about his list is that it features “desk prosecutors,” elected or appointed prosecutors, not actual line attorney prosecutors working in the trenches.  A friend who works at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office reports that virtually no employees at the entire 1000+ person office contributed to Nelson, although plenty contributed to Andrew Thomas.

Besides their liberal viewpoints, what do all of these endorsers have in common? They oppose the prosecution of illegal immigrants, and have records demonstrating so. Nelson’s “prosecutor support” is sort of the equivalent of “desk police chiefs” supporting a candidate, not regular line-level police officers. Nelson has the support of three (present/former) liberal Attorney Generals: Democrat Janet Napolitano, Democrat Terry Goddard, and very liberal (most people consider him a Democrat) Grant Woods. So their support comes as no surprise. Nelson doesn’t have the support of other former Attorney Generals, such as Jack LaSota, a Republican who is supporting Thomas.

The county attorneys around the state who are supporting Nelson are all Democrats, no surprise there that they endorsed Nelson, except one, Cochise County Attorney Republican Ed Rheimheimer, who is considered very liberal, especially on illegal immigration. What’s telling is that even out of these usually liberal-leaning “desk prosecutors,” Nelson could only round up five of the 13 other county attorneys in Arizona to support him.

Nelson also claims to have the support of Assistant Attorney Generals and Assistant U.S. Attorneys. The Assistant Attorney Generals come as no surprise considering Nelson was a a top-level advisor at the Attorney General’s Office for years under Napolitano. Most of the AAGs who contributed to Nelson aren’t prosecutors, they’re civil attorneys just like Nelson. In addition, Goddard is under investigation by Thomas & Sheriff Arpaio’s office related to the Petersen bribery issues, so he and some of his subordinates have a big incentive to oust Thomas. The U.S. District Attorneys who contributed to Nelson were coerced by fake Republican Andrew Pacheco to attend a secret fundraiser he put on for Nelson at his home. Can you imagine that kind of pressure from co-workers? Of course they contributed. Most of them are probably civil attorneys, not prosecutors.

The two former U.S. Attorneys who endorsed Nelson are equally predictable. Democrat Jose Rivera’s endorsement is no surprise, and Nelson can thank Rivera’s close friend Andrew Pacheco for that prominent endorsement. He can also thank Pacheco for getting Pacheco’s former boss Paul Charlton’s endorsement. Charlton has an ax to grind against Republicans having been fired by the Bush administration for being soft on the death penalty and illegal immigration.

If Nelson is trying to get into a contest with Thomas over who has more prosecutorial support, he will lose. Unless they’re establishment, “desk prosecutors,” prosecutors don’t want a liberal Democrat who will be soft on crime.

Case in point: Check out the ACLU Tim website and contrast it with the Democrat Party’s “Crazyspace” site making fun of Republican politicians. The ACLU Tim site has a series of hysterically funny shots of Tim on TV. There are also some pretty funny posts about the ACLU and the list of links on the site is classic.

Whereas the Crazyspace site’s equivalent page making fun of county attorney Andrew Thomas is dull, even from a liberal point of view. What’s funny about “Provoked outrage by arresting the editors of the New Times for reporting public information.” (which isn’t even true, according to the ACLU Tim site, but the Democrats haven’t bothered to correct the error)

When Politicker AZ arrived on the scene a few months ago, we had high hopes for it as perhaps a fair and balanced alternative to the AZ Republic and East Valley Tribune. It is owned by the New York Observer.

We’ve been sorely disappointed. It appears to be even more biased. One of their new featured columnists is David Waid, former chairman of the AZ Democrat Party. Their coverage of the Maricopa County Attorney’s race consists of information fed to it by the Tim Nelson campaign, to the point of ridiculousness. Nelson has dodged various speaking engagements, but PolitickerAZ made it look like it was his opponent, Gerald Richard, who was dodging the engagements.

Trying to add a comment correcting erroneous information like this is futile; the comments are never approved. At least the liberal Arizona Republic and the East Valley Tribune don’t censor comments they don’t agree with! Even outwardly partisan conservative blogs like Sonoran Alliance don’t censor comments from the left they disagree with; they have a regular cadre of left wing commenters who freely post on that site.

 Their page of press releases consists of probably 80% liberal press releases.  What a waste. They’re just a free rip-off of the Yellow Sheet.

When the Arizona Republic, Democrat Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, and conservative Republicans all agree on something, there must be something to it. The results are in: Goddard’s 2-year investigation of Maricopa County Superintendent of Schools Sandra Dowling was trumped up and politically motivated. This past week Dowling, a champion of home schooling, pled guilty to a low-level misdemeanor of nepotism for hiring her daughter to work at the office. Considering Arizona’s nepotism laws are vague and randomly applicable to certain government positions but not others (in some circumstances because officials have been successful at getting the legislature to carve out exceptions for them), and considering we have heard about other elected officials guilty of the same thing who have not been prosecuted, this is a pretty petty offense.

Dowling had originally been charged by Goddard with 25 felony counts, most which were thrown out by a judge. Fortunately, Goddard was forced to turn the case over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which did the best it could with an overprosecuted, trumped-up case.

Dowling has now resumed her full position as County Schools Supervisor which includes running the Accommodation School District, something Goddard and his buddies had gotten her removed from. But because of the humiliating public witchhunt, she has decided not to run for reelection.

Dowling was just another victim in Goddard’s list of Republican targets - and she was a big target because she could have potentially ran against him for governor in 2010. Let’s go over the list of Republican leaders Goddard has gone after:

1. State Treasurer Dean Martin - investigation is still ongoing, and based on information Martin found about Goddard’s efforts to prosecute Petersen, the Sheriff is now investigating Goddard
Martin is considered a formidable candidate for governor in 2010.

2. Former State Treasurer David Petersen - resigned and pled guilty to a low-level misdemeanor for failing to report $4000 he’d made in income outside of the office

3. Former County Assessor Kevin Ross - felony conviction against him was overturned by the Court of Appeals. Ross is now suing Goddard for malicious prosecution.

4. Former Rep. Colette Rosati - after a 2 -year investigation, found nothing

5. Rep. Rick Murphy - after a 2-year investigation, found nothing

5. Constantine Querard, conservative Republican campaign consultant - after a 2 year investigation, found nothing

As Dowling likes to say, where do they go to get their reputation back?