Dispatch From The Inferno State: The People Of Arizona Need Some Good News. We Want Them To Get Some On Tuesday.

-by Doug Kahn

Sometimes during the run-up to an election I’m overcome by irrational exuberance. I think Randy Parraz is going to pull out a shocking win on Tuesday and win the Democratic nomination for US Senate. It’ll be Parraz vs. McCain, and that’s the contest Arizona needs. Randy Parraz is an honest, caring human being who isn’t afraid of Joe Arpaio, Russell Pearce and the other racist bullies in Arizona. He’s the kind of progressive Democrat we’re proud to call our own. Go to his website and see if you don’t agree.

Steve Singiser at DailyKos has some recent polling in the race.

AZ-Sen: Parraz internal claims close race for Democratic nod
Picking up a poll that slipped through the cracks last week: a new internal poll from Senate contender Randy Parraz has him within striking distance of the long-perceived frontrunner in the Democratic field, Tucson councilman Rodney Glassman. Glassman still leads, even in Parraz's poll, nabbing 20% of the vote to 17% for Parraz. The internal poll, by Dem pollsters Winning Connections, showed a ton of undecideds (nearly half of the electorate) still up for grabs in the August 24th primary.

Randy managed to come up with enough money to run his own tv, the positive biographical piece that a candidate is supposed to run first. From what I’ve seen, it’s a substantial buy. There’s an English and a Spanish version, and I’ve seen them, they’re good. You know, every candidate would like to win on a purely positive campaign.  

Howie has set up a new way for us to help win elections. We now have a 527 committee, the Blue America PAC I.E., and our first television buy is in Arizona, for Randy Parraz. The spot runs today through Monday in the Tucson and Phoenix areas.
 
We decided to do some of the dirty work, and take on Rodney Glassman, the front-runner.
 
Oh, Randy’s not reticent about pointing out that Rodney is a hypocrite, not a real Democrat. It’s easy to make contrasts, which Randy did in the four debates; having principles tends to give you the self-confidence to tell the truth. The other Democrats around here are busy trying to look like benevolent Republicans; so when Randy talks about how he spoke up against Joe Arpaio at Maricopa County Supervisors’ meetings in 2008 (and got arrested for it) he stands out. When he says it’s past time for complete equality for LGBT people, no exceptions, he looks like the leader people around here need. It’s fairly simple, looking good here; just have the gumption to tell the truth. 

This from the Daily Star about Glassman running away from important issues: 

Democrat Rodney Glassman has somehow managed to avoid a yes-or-no answer on whether he supports gay marriage, which has come up at debates between the four candidates vying for the seat. About all he'll say is he supports equality.

 
If you’re unfamiliar with the race: Ravishing Rodney, the Denatured Boy, is a spoiled, immature rich kid from Fresno, California, who moved to Arizona and became a Democrat because it’s fairly cheap to buy elections here. He promised to personally finance his campaign with millions of dollars in family money, and early on locked up the endorsements of the (clueless) Democratic establishment. Since then he’s convinced everyone who has come in contact with him that he’s one of the prime shitheads in Arizona politics, and we’re talking about the home state of some fabulous wankers.
 
For instance, remember the guy with the gun strapped to his leg outside an Obama event in 2009? He’s really from Scottsdale.


Here’s a sign carried by 3 guys protesting outside the Phoenix New Times, a good place to research real news about all that’s right wing in the Inferno State. (Not because they’re wingnutty, but because they agree it’s important to ridicule the idiots among us.)


The road department agrees with me:


There’s some circumstantial evidence that women don’t like working for Ravishing Rodney. The Phoenix New Times had this a few days ago: 

Since July, three top staffers have bailed on Glassman: Political Director Junelle Cavero left last month; Field Director Kristin Gwinn resigned a couple of weeks ago; Communications Director Dawn Teo stepped down earlier this week. Sources tell me there are more resignations on the way.
 
Glassman's press secretary Tina May confirmed the departures. "This is the regular churn of campaigns," May explained. "People come and go all the time."
 
I contacted the three women, who all declined comment for this story, other than to admit they're no longer working for Glassman.
 
But several confidential sources inform me that Glassman's staffers left because they were not happy with the behavior of their candidate.

These sources relayed a litany of complaints about the Glassman campaign, from Glassman berating staffers and volunteers in public, even yelling at them, to Glassman's having his brother Jeremy play a major role in the campaign (doing little or nothing, they say), and the fact that Glassman and his minions gave Democrats reason to believe he would sink millions into his bid for Senate. 

Sources also claim staffers were upset by a homophobic remark the former Tucson city councilman and onetime registered Republican reportedly made about a gay city councilwoman, saying that, "The toughest thing for me to do will be to sit next to an openly gay councilmember." 

Glassman denied making the statement to the Arizona Daily Star, but the councilwoman in question, Karin Uhlich, told the Star that the report was accurate.

 
I’m going to do my bit and go phone bank for Randy today and tomorrow at the UFCW office in Phoenix. I want to know if he really has the grassroots effort going that I think he does, and the turnout at this kind of volunteer opportunity will prove it. Only dedicated volunteers will call voters all day.

Dispatch from the Inferno State: Good News, For a Change-- Randy Parraz is Running for U.S. Senate

-by Doug Kahn

Democrat Randy Parraz for U.S. Senate, for the State of Arizona. I wanted to get that out of the way before I drifted off into my usual digressions, which can fill the visual page and prevent you from reading down to my real point. (My god, I’m doing it again.) 

There’s a lot of news to report from the eighth circle. A brilliant Federal Judge thinking rings around an Einsteinium of attorneys. Wacko state pols and Senator John Kyl threatening infant U.S. citizens with deportation. (To where?) Cowardly Democratic candidates and spineless Democratic Representatives running for the Superstition Mountains to avoid planeloads of reporters and pundits.  
Dream Students giving Washington a lesson in effective politics, causing the in-crowd to whine about divisiveness in public, then yell and scream behind closed doors and on cell phones. (Reminder to political operatives of said Senators and Representatives: Calls may be monitored and recorded for quality assurance purposes.) Highly professional, stoic law enforcement officers, and their opposites on Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Bizarro Goon Squad. The Somos Coalition hanging together, not separately. Puente and the National Day Laborer Network (and numerous other brave actionistas) confronting the racist Maricopa County dragnet that shames Arizona. That’s not for today, but over the next three weeks. 

If we’re ever going to get out of this right-wing place (figuratively I mean), we have to nominate and then elect people like Randy Parraz. The primary is exactly three weeks away, so Randy needs people talking about him. And he needs money, not an extreme amount, but probably more than we can raise right here. 

There’s a candidate debate tonight, and it should help. Randy vs. Rodney Glassman (the Human Cliché). Here’s Randy introducing himself in the July 27th debate: “I’ll fight to bring the troops home from Iraq, and as a lifelong Democrat I will fight for immigration reform, marriage equality, and to overturn SB1070.” Watch the exchange on marriage equality at 18:30 of the video.



So we need to convince the progressive community to help make Randy the winner of the 4-way primary on August 24th. Not hard: a reasonable estimate of 25% turnout among 1,000,000 Democrats, and 100,000 votes wins the nomination. Read the position statements on his website: He’s the only candidate telling the truth, telling it straight. Democratic voters know the difference between direct statements and vague wanderings that mean nothing, but they have to hear them. I think we can easily raise $50,000 here, and that gets Randy half way to telling enough voters who he is. 

There actually is polling in the race, by Rasmussen on July 21st: Randy pulls 10%, Glassman 15%, Undecided about 50%. These numbers, if reliable, indicate that very few voters recognize any of the names. If you stick a made-up name in a poll it gets 10%. So it’s all down to Randy reaching enough Democrats. 

I’ve written about him before. He co-founded an organization called Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability that took on Sheriff Joe, and seven members were arrested for it in September 2008. Because they attended and tried to make public comment at a Maricopa County Board of Supervisors’ meeting. No civil disobedience, no shouting or demonstrating, just citizen participation. The charges were thrown out, and the Judge awarded them legal fees. A more recent judgment paid them $475,000 for the rights violations. 

Randy was arrested by 7 deputies in a different incident, just outside the door. He told me that they shackled his feet at the jail. Hard to believe this is the United States of America. 

I think that we need to prove this fall that real Democrats can win primaries, then beat Conservatives in the general. If we can’t show that voters agree with us now, with 2 years of foot-dragging and wasted opportunities for progress fresh in their minds, it’s a threat to the progressive movement. It would validate the strategy of not-talking.  

I’m not going to make a game out of this, and offer to match contributions. You know who you want to help, and how much you’re able to give. I’ve contributed the maximum, $2400 for the primary and $2400 for the general. 

Look, the people of Arizona need our help. This guy is the real thing.


UPDATE: Glassman Didn't Shy Away From Tackling A Tough Task

Doug live in the Phoenix area so he may have missed this breaking news out of Tucson but I'm sure he won't mind me adding it to his post. When Glassman was running for City Council in 2007 he was asked, “What will be the toughest thing for you to do as a Tucson city councilmember?”

Glassman responded “The toughest thing for me to do will be to sit next to an openly gay councilmember.”

Karen Uhlich is a current Tucson councilmember who was just re-elected for her second term and is the openly gay person that sat next to Rodney Glassman until he resigned to run for US Senate.

Uhlich is aware of these statements and said that she had a “heart-to-heart with Rodney.”

“He knows how strongly I feel about these issues,” Uhlich said. When asked how she felt about the comment Glassman made, Uhlich responded that while they resolved their conflict so that city business could be taken care of, she also added that perhaps there should be a “higher standard for candidates.”

No wonder he's the DSCC candidate... now it all makes sense.

Dispatch From The Inferno State: VP Biden, Dolores Huerta Attend Event For Serious Democrats

AG Terry Goddard Shows Up But Neglects to Bring Spine

That's Harold Lloyd to the right of Arizona's Attorney General

-by Doug Kahn

On Saturday I went to the Arizona Democratic Party’s Heritage Dinner, special guest Joseph Biden. I owe great thanks to a dedicated environmentalist and progressive who treated me to dinner at his $10,000 Platinum Sponsor table. (I’m saving my money to ditch 2 Blue Dogs this fall.) I think he keeps forgetting (or forgiving me for) how much I aggravate people in the Democratic Party’s ‘brain trust’ (ahem) here. (Don’t get the wrong idea; I’m not talking about regular Dems, the faithful liberals who are keeping civilization alive here during the Dark Ages.) 

Look, all I was doing was sending tweets to my legions of fans. Okay, I admit it: I only have 9 followers, and one of them is Darrell Issa. I believe in quality: Howie Klein, Cliff Schecter, Jacqrat, David Swanson and BlueGal. My God, I just realized; my good buddy, my favorite Yankee fan, won’t even pay attention to me. 

And no one checked my ID! For sure the Secret Service was all over the place, and I had to go through a metal detector after emptying my pockets. Maybe some of the good people in the Democratic Party here (and there really are a lot of them) wanted the dinner to provide a counter-example to the racists behind SB1070. 

No one made me take off my Phillies cap, either. I think some of the attendees were bothered that I came in jeans and running shoes. They stared, anyway, although when you’re as insecure as I am it always feels that way. Not that I feel obligated to offer excuses, but my knees just went through Phillies Phantasy Camp (baseball for geezers), then 6 weeks of couch potato-dom (chips and 10 extra lbs. included), and 2 operations to remove obsolete parts. They’re going to look like knees again any week now, but they just don’t fit in any of the dress slacks I’ve got with me in Arizona.
 
I’m sure Joe doesn’t care about that kind of thing anyway, being from Scranton and all. I’ve seen him at one of my favorite diners, just over in Delaware, across the border from where I first lived in Pennsylvania, eating an incredibly greasy breakfast. Actually, he wasn’t eating, because he was talking non-stop. That’s Joe. 

First, I’ve got to say to all the local Democrats with principles, those who were there and those who weren’t, I have a deep feeling of admiration for your persistence in fighting the good fight against incredible odds, year after year. The applause for Joe was polite until he said “We cannot single out people based on the way they look.” Then a 2-minute standing ovation. You deserve so much more than you’re getting from House members Harry Mitchell, Ann Kirkpatrick, and Gabrielle Giffords. Not one of them has made a statement referring to SB1070. (A lot of ramped-up b.s. about drug dealers, “federal inaction,” and “border crackdowns” though, you three-pack of useless weasels. You know, people are getting hurt in Arpaio’s lockup while you twiddle your thumbs; doesn’t that bother you?) I just checked again with Harry Mitchell’s office. “Oh, the press person will get back to you.”  

The Vice President had a schedule to meet, so the order of speakers was inverted. I had never sat through or failed to turn off a Biden oration previously. I believe he brings it from a place of great calm, at least it seems so when he speaks softly. A couple of times the volume went up, effectively. In the end, it was obvious that he had planned his talk to lead up to the most important point he was making, that SB1070 was bad for Arizona and Arizonans because it was meant to hurt, and sprang from racism. 

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon spoke briefly and forcefully, less poetical. Bad laws and bad people (Joe Arpaio was one he mentioned) need to be removed, is how I remember it, and he was going to keep working on getting that done. Damn right.
 
State Attorney General Terry Goddard, the guy responsible for protecting us all from the kind of abuses that have been going on here for over a decade, then conclusively proved himself to be an abject coward. He began by promising to spare us from unnecessary wind, by not repeating what the previous speakers had talked about. As skeptical as I am about candidates for executive office, I never imagined that meant he’d skip saying that SB1070 was wrong. If you want the full effect of the man’s feckless dodges, view this live interview with the local news:



Elsewhere he was quoted saying this: “I think the national reaction is very sad for Arizona because it gives us a black eye, and it also is going to cost us dearly economically,” he said. “The bottom line is we have a serious problem on the border. We need to focus on that, and this bill does not make us safer and I think that’s a tragic misdirection.”

And elsewhere: “The tea baggers and company aren’t the only ones who are frustrated. We need more border patrol,” says Attorney General Goddard, who is running for governor as a Democrat. “But the serious crime is the human smugglers, the dope smugglers. [SB1070] doesn’t do one thing to fight that.” 

Apologizing for teabaggers. Nice work if you can get it. The ‘tragic misdirection’ is the legions of Democrats here and around the country who say how they understand that Arizonans are frustrated with the “broken immigration system.” Like hell. As Digby has so eloquently chronicled, crime is way, way down here, during the decade of the greatest wave of immigration. Especially on the border, in the border towns, like Nogales. This is whipped up nonsense, and the Attorney General knows it, and that makes him a hypocrite. You all need to face up to this, Arizona Democrats. Your standard-bearer is not a leader, he caved to the fear-mongers.
 
At dinner I sat next to a new employee of Rodney Glassman’s (a Democrat running for McCain’s Senate seat), someone who had come out here from Washington to raise money for him. I sent this person and Rodney’s press person the following email, hoping he’d get a backbone and remember what being a Democrat is all about. They promised to get back to me one way or another, and do it today (Tuesday). 
 
This is what I have as the Rodney Glassman statement on SB1070: 

"This legislation is a rash attempt to score political points. The federal government has failed to secure our border and that must change. John McCain has been in Washington for 28 years and while he has been on all sides of the issue, our immigration problem has gotten worse under his watch.

"S.B.1070 is the type of legislation that undermines the trust between law enforcement and neighborhoods that so many have worked so long to achieve. It does nothing to secure the border or stop the violence in our border region. It does nothing to address the reasons so many cross our borders without going through legal channels. This bill is nothing more than an unfunded mandate that shifts the financial burden onto cities and towns already grappling with budget cuts."

 
[See how that’s done, how neatly the messy little problem of morality and human rights gets avoided?]
 
I'm going to send in another post in the next 24 hours. Is this the statement you want me to talk about?
 
You will by now have seen other opinion/analysis pieces I've written online. I'm not alone in writing this kind of stuff. I fit in with the writers on the three Blue America sites (Crooks and Liars, Hullabaloo, and DownWithTyranny) because we think along the same lines. Numerous other sites and writers and activists are paying attention to you, to Arizona; and the thoughts I'm having are going through the minds of thousands of other people.
 
It should be obvious that this is an emotional issue; people aren't shunning Arizona on a whim; it's not a fad. (Maybe it's difficult to see that from your perspective as a longtime resident of Arizona?) Boycotts don't just spring up out of nowhere, because the type of people who boycott and campaign for boycotts generally are desperate to help other people; everyone knows that a boycott hurts everyone in the state, not just the small group of people responsible for the wrongs. It's a last resort, a gut reaction reserved for the worst of abuses, perpetrated by the most intransigent and contrary individuals. (Like Russell Pearce and Joe Arpaio and Andrew Thomas.) People boycotted South Africa because of racism. People boycotted Arizona because of racism. Both were eventually successful. Can you remember any others?
 
We see Raul Grijalva speaking out, and saying what we all feel. But we expect that of him, as someone who experienced the racism, campaigned against it, succeeded despite it. An obvious question arises: Isn't there anyone else in Arizona who'll stand up to these people?
 
I'm just a visitor here; but I've demonstrated in the past my desire to help all of you take your state in the right direction. [I was talking about the $20,000 I contributed to the state party in 2008.] The dinner on Saturday was great until the end; the absolutely gut-wrenching realization that Terry Goddard wasn't going to stand up for what's right. Don't blame the Democrats in Arizona? [A repeated theme at the dinner.] You folks shouldn't say that, if you're not going to back it up. People are going to want to know this: do you get it? 
 

Terry Goddard's focus on the Mexican Drug Cartels (oh, please) and crime along the border (which has declined, obviously, since even the AZ Republic says so) is remarkable in its timidity. The boycott is happening because there are obvious and defiant villains like Joe Arpaio and Russell Pearce. The AG is the chief law enforcement officer in the state. And he won't stand up and say that the law is wrong, that it's bad because it recognizes and confirms and rewards the methods and abuses and racism of Joe Arpaio and the MCSO. The national outrage over SB1070 and that puffed up buffoon Russell Pearce would never have happened if it weren't for the existence of Joe Arpaio and the MCSO, committing abuses every day of the year.
 
If you folks understand politics, and people's gut feelings about politics and politicians, you must understand this already: people outside Arizona wonder if there aren't any white men in Arizona who'll stand up to this bully. I'm just being totally straight here about American society. Do you realize how pathetic it looks for a white man to criticize [Republican Governor] Jan Brewer for not standing up to those guys? In that context, understand that there are only two possible roles in the national media for Terry Goddard and Rodney Glassman: the hero, or the goat.
 
The press statement at the top makes you look weak, because you're obviously dodging a direct confrontation. The more skillful and logical the dodge, the worse it makes you look. This is a time when your previous service and political resume work against you, because if you act timidly, you end up looking like an empty suit. I don't know one single thing about your politics, if you're progressive or not. But I do know that you're incredibly lucky: you have this one shot at becoming a national figure overnight (and, by the way, doing the right thing for all the Hispanic residents of Arizona, doing something they desperately need). Come out swinging against Joe Arpaio and SB1070.  

I’m waiting. I’ll let you know if they call. Meanwhile, it's good someone is speaking up:

McCain Gets An Opponent For His Senate Seat

Does Glassman have what it takes to vanquish a long in the tooth Goliath?

I can't remember whose joke this was but I heard it on Columbus Day. Someone mentions John McCain to Christopher Columbus and he asks if it's the same McCain who was on the Pinta... Everyone knows who John McCain is; he's the guy that picked Sarah Palin to be a national figure and then got swamped by the first African American to run for president on a major party. McCain, who only won 173 electoral votes (to Obama's 365), managed to win 46% of the national popular vote and he insists to friends that he would have won the presidency if the stock market hadn't tanked and Bush and the Republicans hadn't been so clearly and undeniably at fault. Oddly, though, he did better nationally with that 46% than he did in his own state (45%)-- where Obama generously didn't go to campaign. Obama won in Pima County (Tucson) and McCain seems to have won in Maricopa (Phoenix), although it looks like there was significant electoral fraud there (something like what happened recently in Afghanistan), perhaps enough to have swung the state to McCain. (Obama also won Apache, Coconino, and Santa Cruz counties.)

There were some polls that showed that Arizona's popular Democratic governor, Janet Napolitano, could beat McCain-- widely viewed as an absentee Senator who spends far more time on cable TV shows than in Senate committees or in his own state. Obama saved him the indignity of that by appointing her to his cabinet. Today a Tucson city councilman, Rodney Glassman, announced that he had formed an exploratory committee to examine running against McCain.

There are already two somewhat deranged teabaggers, Andy Martin and Minuteman founder Chris Simcox running against him in the GOP primary, which will probably make it more difficult for McCain to put as much energy as he wants to into making over the GOP as a less right-wing fringe movement and more like a mainstream political party again, something he and Lindsey Graham have been working on.

Back to Glassman. Does he have more than an ice cube's chance in the Arizona sun to win? I called the number at the bottom on his issue-less website and the message said the number is no longer in service. Two strikes-- no issue positions on the website other than that McCain is a doodyhead-- and a malfunctioning phone number on day one of the campaign. On the other hand, Glassman is an ally and former legislative assistant to one of the most heroic political leaders in Arizona-- if not the entire southwest-- Raul Grijalva. That's worth something-- even if only waiting to hear what Glassman thinks about... anything. His record as a city councilman is progressive enough, especially when it comes to sustainability issues (his specialty). He's also been quite good on labor and LGBT issues. There is, of course, a clear way to victory in Arizona. Under no circumstances try to be a Republican-like candidate who offers no choice and no inspiration for the many people who think McCain is yesterday's-- or last century's-- news. Glassman might start by reading, and committing to memory, Frank Rich's column in Sunday's NY Times, Two Wrongs Make Another Fiasco. McCain, like Nixon before him, tries to razzle and dazzle everyone with his great knowledge of foreign and military matters. Truth is, he's an ignorant, narrow-minded fossil who gets by on bluster and doesn't know squat. Glassman should take him on-- and take him on head-on-- in the area he's presumed to be strongest in but is actually as weak as a doddering old fool ready to charge a tank on a mule. McCain can be beaten on Afghanistan-- and Rich laid out the template, calling McCain the noisiest standard bearer of neoCons who have managed to get everything wrong-- everything.

He made every wrong judgment call that could be made after 9/11. It’s not just that he echoed the Bush administration’s constant innuendos that Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda’s attack on America. Or that he hyped the faulty W.M.D. evidence to the hysterical extreme of fingering Iraq for the anthrax attacks in Washington. Or that he promised we would win the Iraq war “easily.” Or that he predicted that the Sunnis and the Shiites would “probably get along” in post-Saddam Iraq because there was “not a history of clashes” between them.

What’s more mortifying still is that McCain was just as wrong about Afghanistan and Pakistan. He routinely minimized or dismissed the growing threats in both countries over the past six years, lest they draw American resources away from his pet crusade in Iraq.

Two years after 9/11 he was claiming that we could “in the long term” somehow “muddle through” in Afghanistan. (He now has the chutzpah to accuse President Obama of wanting to “muddle through” there.) Even after the insurgency accelerated in Afghanistan in 2005, McCain was still bragging about the “remarkable success” of that prematurely abandoned war. In 2007, some 15 months after the Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf signed a phony “truce” ceding territory on the Afghanistan border to terrorists, McCain gave Musharraf a thumb’s up. As a presidential candidate in the summer of 2008, McCain cared so little about Afghanistan it didn’t even merit a mention among the national security planks on his campaign Web site.

He takes no responsibility for any of this. Asked by Katie Couric last week about our failures in Afghanistan, McCain spoke as if he were an innocent bystander: “I think the reason why we didn’t do a better job on Afghanistan is our attention-- either rightly or wrongly-- was on Iraq.” As Tonto says to the Lone Ranger, “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”

Along with his tribunes in Congress and the punditocracy, Wrong-Way McCain still presumes to give America its marching orders. With his Senate brethren in the Three Amigos, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, he took to the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page to assert that “we have no choice” but to go all-in on Afghanistan-- rightly or wrongly, presumably-- just as we had in Iraq. Why? “The U.S. walked away from Afghanistan once before, following the Soviet collapse,” they wrote. “The result was 9/11. We must not make that mistake again.”

This shameless argument assumes-- perhaps correctly-- that no one in this country remembers anything. So let me provide a reminder: We already did make that mistake again when we walked away from Afghanistan to invade Iraq in 2003-- and we did so at the Three Amigos’ urging. Then, too, they promoted their strategy as a way of preventing another 9/11-- even though no one culpable for 9/11 was in Iraq. Now we’re being asked to pay for their mistake by squandering stretched American resources in yet another country where Al Qaeda has largely vanished.

Regardless of how young Glassman measures up-- and from what I've heard from friends in Arizona, there's no reason to be wildly optimistic; most see him as a careful moderate-- making McCain spend his money defending his seat rather than giving it away to other candidates by itself makes this exercise worthwhile. And Glassman could make it interesting. (He's known for his association with Grijalva, after all, not Harry Mitchell or Gabby Giffords.) Although it would take a major fuck-up by McCain for Glassman to win, it’s noteworthy that McCain never has faced a serious challenger in Arizona and the older he gets, the more likely it becomes that he won’t keep that temper under control, although we probably won’t get to hear him call Glassman a trollop and a c@nt unless Glassman takes off the kid gloves and goads the hell out of the old coot.