Martha McSally Refuses To Hold Town Halls But A Secret Tape Of Her Talking To Banksters Could Kill Her Re-election Shot

Arizona's second congressional district (the white parts of Tucson, the eastern half of Pima County and all of Cochise County) is one of the swingiest in the country. In 2008, McCain beat Obama 50-49% (3,000 votes), in 2012 Romney beat Obama 49.9-48.4% and last year Hillary beat Señor Trumpanzee 49.6% to 44.7%. Meanwhile the current congresswoman, knee-jerk Ryan rubber stamp Martha McSally, lost to Ron Barber in 2012, the first time she ran, by 2,454 votes (out of 292,000 cast) and then beat him in 2014 by 161 votes, the closest race in the country. Last year McSally did better against a weak Democratic candidate with no DCCC support. She beat him 179,806 (57%) to 135,873 (43%). She spent $7,826,194 to his $1,576,119 and while the DCCC refused to spend any money tp help Matt Heinz, Ryan's shady SuperPAC put $662,677 into the race against him.

It isn't clear who her opponent will be in 2018 but it is clear that AZ-02 will be one of the backward-looking DCCC's top red-to-blue targets. Ex-Republican Billy Kovacs, William Foster, Charlie Verdin (a Berniecrat), former Air Force fighter pilot Jeff Latas, and conservative former state legislator Victoria Steele have all either indicated that they're running or that they're probably running. And, grotesque right-wing career politician Ann Kirkpatrick, a worthless fake Democrat, who represented a district in distant Flagstaff senses another opportunity to wreck more of the Democratic Parry brand by moving south and challenging McSally, who would easily make mincemeat out of her. If people want a conservative Republican they can vote for McSally; why bother to vote for one with a "D" next to her name? (Last year she challenged McCain in the Senate race and lost dismally after running an incoherent and inauthentic campaign-- 53.7% to 40.7%-- that not even the DSCC could support. Schumer and Tester spent $46,000 before realizing what a complete dud she is and abandoning her to her fate.

McSally's best hope for a win would be a Blue Dog or New Dem like Kirkpatrick as an opponent. With no real choice, it would take a mammoth anti-Trump/anti-Ryan tsunami to dislodge McSally for someone offering no real alternative other than partisan labeling. But whichever Democrat does face her, they will be happy to know that the right-wing crackpots at the Club for Growth have been running TV ads against McSally already, claiming she's a "professional politician" and that she's "in the way," although she votes for virtually everything Trump and Ryan want so I'm not sure-- short of a fascist take over of government-- what the Club for Growth goons what her to get out of the way of.

Last week, Trump's SuperPAC, America First Policies, announced they'll be countering the Club for Growth ads in appreciation for her support for TrumpCare. DJ Quinlan, spokesman for the Arizona Alliance for Healthcare Security, said the ads by America First Policies was another demonstration that McSally was aligned with Trump. "McSally showed her true colors when she supported a bill that would take healthcare coverage away from 41,000 people in her own community. She has forgotten that she is supposed to be working for the people of Southern Arizona, not taking orders from Donald Trump." Her polling is in the garbage, showing that if elections were today, she would lose to a generic Democrat by 7 points. Her job approval rating is in the mid-30's, a political death sentence.

A couple days ago, the Tucson Weekly got its hands on a secret tape that could be very harmful to McSally's reelection prospects, a secret tape of McSally speaking privately to the fat-cats at the Arizona Bankers Association. What she said to them was very different from what she says to her Republican base, who she's been working hard to convince that she and Trump and on the same page, maybe a good primary tact but terrible for a general election in a 50-50 district like AZ-02.

McSally complained that President Donald Trump and his tweets were creating troubling "distractions" and "it's basically being taken out on me. Any Republican member of Congress, you are going down with the ship. And we're going to hand the gavel to Pelosi in 2018, they only need 28 seats and the path to that gavel being handed over is through my seat. And right now, it doesn't matter that it's me, it doesn't matter what I've done. I have an 'R' next to my name and right now, this environment would have me not prevail."

Admittedly, McSally was making these comments as she was asking the bankers to open their checkbooks for her reelection campaign, so it could well be that she was just doing the ol' fear-mongering-for-dollars act.

McSally's comments came to light after some of McSally's critics-- including Kristen Randall, the leader of Indivisible Southern Arizona-- ordered tickets to a talk McSally was giving at a luncheon for the Arizona Bankers Association.

Someone on Team McSally, however, appears to have taken a closer look at who was attending the event, because four of the five members of the group received emails about two hours before the lunch informing them that their tickets had been revoked. "They caught onto us," Randall says with a laugh.

But the fifth member... did manage to appear bankerly enough to crash the party-- and the spy recorded McSally's entire speech for the Randall's group, and from there, it fell into our hands.

McSally was more blunt in many of her comments behind closed doors than she typically is when questioned on the issues. In fact, she expressed frustration that the media and her constituents ask her to comment on what President Trump says and does.

"The environment has changed and some of it changed on January 20," McSally told the crowd. "There's just an element out there that's just, like, so against the president. Like they just can't see straight. And all of a sudden on January 20, I'm like his twin sister to them. And I'm, like, responsible for everything he does, and tweets and says. And they want me to be spending my time as a pundit. 'I disagree with that. I agree with this.' I have a job in the legislature!"

Randall says she does expect McSally to speak up when Trump does something offensive.

"That's her job," Randall says. "When there's going to be a vote, we want a statement. We want a dialogue. And she's not giving it to us. She seems really put out... She's a leader in our community and that is part of her job. There's a human component to her job that she very obviously does not enjoy."

In her talk, McSally acknowledged that the job comes with a lot of frustration. She said serving in Congress had gotten a lot harder since Trump's election last year and that she's forced to "navigate in the political theater, but I don't breathe life into it and I don't enjoy it, just to be frank with you. It actually drains me."

As she was talking to bankers, McSally focused on the latest GOP efforts to repeal the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that regulated banks after the 2007 economic collapse. She characterized Dodd-Frank as a hindrance to banks that needs to be repealed.

...Randall says she's still hoping McSally will do some open town halls in Tucson so her group won't have to resort to subterfuge to try to find out her positions.

"I'm pretty angry that she was willing to talk to out-of-district bankers but she's not willing to talk to us," Randall said.

In the meantime, Indivisible Southern Arizona will be back to the protest beat at 8 a.m. Friday morning outside McSally's midtown offices, 4400 E. Broadway. This time, the group will be expressing unhappiness about McSally's support for overturning Dodd-Frank-- and they'll have loudspeakers to play McSally's comments about the law to the bankers.

The banksters love McSally and the Finance Sector gave her more in bribes last cycle than any other Arizona congressmember other than House Financial Services member and Wall Street shill Blue Dog Krysten Sinema. Sinema took $1,003,940 in bribes from the sector. McSally got $760,766. The next biggest Arizona recipient was Republican David Schweikert ($213,850). Same thing career-long. The banksters' top fave-- meaning most easily corrupted-- was Sinema ($1,817,930) and #2 was McSally ($1,415,903). The banksters don't give out that kind of money without a return on investment and Sinema and McSally both stink to high heaven of corruption and shouldn't just be defeated in their reelection attempts; each deserves to go to prison for accepting bribes.