By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — As the Trump administration takes office, “I think the first two years are going to have a flurry of Donald Trump policies being enacted,” a high Trump campaign official who’s also state treasurer of Arizona told The Wanderer.
Treasurer Jeff DeWit, who was the first elected official in the nation to endorse Trump and became chief operating officer of his presidential campaign, said the United States needs more businessmen like Trump to fix the messes that establishment politicians have caused.
“I’ve known from the very first that Donald Trump” was the best candidate for president, DeWit told The Wanderer, and “we got it done” by electing him. DeWit served as special adviser to Trump’s transition team and might receive a role in his administration.
DeWit was among officeholders who spoke at a January 14 Phoenix meeting where Maricopa County GOP precinct committeemen elected their officers for the next two years. About 1,250 chairs for the activists filled the floor at the El Zaribah Shrine Auditorium while other attendees stood along the walls.
There was an undercurrent of drama about whether an effort by Arizona’s Sen. John McCain would succeed in purging more party activists he considered disloyal to him.
McCain had been mortified when both county and state Arizona committeemen officially censured him in recent years as being untrue to the GOP platform. The senator reportedly resolved this wouldn’t happen again — even though he’s widely perceived in Arizona and nationally to be a defiant “maverick.”
A recent illustration of this was McCain’s opposition to Trump’s hopes to kindle better relations with Russia, including McCain passing an unsubstantiated “smear dossier” against Trump to FBI Director James Comey.
Trump has said his July 11, 2015, rally in Phoenix convinced him that he had a serious campaign on his hands. The previous month in New York, he officially announced his presidential race.
The New York billionaire’s campaign had wanted to reserve a 500-person Phoenix hotel ballroom for a rally, but had to move to a hall at the Phoenix Convention Center when the hotel said it was overwhelmed with requests. More than 5,000 people waited on the sidewalk in Phoenix’s July heat to get into the hall.
The July 23, 2015, hardcopy issue of The Wanderer reported the event on its front page, headlined, “Candidate’s Electrifying Stand: Will Trump Walk a Straight Path on Opposing Illegal Entry?”
DeWit told the crowd at the January 14 precinct committeemen’s gathering that Trump “always wants to talk about Arizona” whenever DeWit sees him, and that DeWit had been at Trump Tower the previous Tuesday, January 10.
As to a future role with Trump, DeWit told the crowd that although he loves living in Arizona, “I got in politics to make a difference” for the long term, not just the here and now.
Among other Arizona speakers at the GOP precinct committeemen’s gathering was Cong. Trent Franks, a leading pro-lifer in the U.S. House.
Asked about this new year in politics, Franks told The Wanderer, “It is vital that Republicans remain deeply humble and absolutely determined to do what’s right by this country, given the historical opportunity before us.”
As to a possible nominee to the Supreme Court expected to be revealed soon by Trump, Franks said, “There is nothing that will define his presidency more than his Supreme Court nominees. If he does that right, he will go down in history as a success.”
Trump’s January 11 New York news conference where he slapped down the unverified “scandal dossier” impressed Franks. “I think he did great. The press finally has met their match” in Trump, Franks said.
The Rule Of Law
Cong. Paul Gosar, a Catholic known for strong conservative positions in the U.S. House, told The Wanderer that he thinks Trump is determinedly “dug in” to choose “a pure constitutionalist” for the Supreme Court, but as to who that might be, Trump has shown his actions can’t be forecast.
The new administration means “getting back to the rule of law, and that’s key…and following it, and enforcing it. Not having the bureaucracy interpret it any way they want to,” Gosar said, adding that Congress has to exercise its authority by standing up for the power of the purse.
On the debate about how to approach Russia, Gosar said, “It’s going to be a lot up to Mr. Trump,” who has “surrounded himself with highly decorated intelligence and military people” to help guide his course.
Former Arizona State Sen. Kelli Ward, who unsuccessfully ran against McCain in last year’s Arizona primary election, commented to The Wanderer about the “smear dossier” against Trump that McCain gave to Comey.
“I think it’s very disappointing that unvetted information has caused such damage to our country and to our president-elect,” Ward said.
During her campaign for the U.S. Senate last year, Ward said, she received lots of unproven information, but she didn’t pass it along to others.
Ward already is running against Arizona’s other “moderate” GOP U.S. senator and McCain pal, first-termer Jeff Flake, who comes up for re-election in 2018. Ward has been a Trump backer, while Flake repeatedly expressed his dislike for Trump.
GOP activist José Borrajero, a retired Phoenix businessman who left Cuba for the United States as a teenager, told The Wanderer that it could have been a good idea for Barack Obama recently to have ended the “wet foot-dry foot” policy for Cubans to gain admission to the U.S. without a visa, but Obama didn’t get any concessions for doing so.
“Whether we still have a need for that policy is debatable,” Borrajero said, standing outside the auditorium as attendees arrived. “Getting rid of the policy would be a good idea if we had any concession from the Castro regime, but we didn’t.”
Obama “wants to leave a scorched-earth policy. He wants to booby-trap as much as he can” as his presidential term ends, Borrajero said.
As to Obama poking at Russia recently, Borrajero said, “I don’t think (Vladimir) Putin’s paying any attention to what Obama’s doling, and if he is, he’s a fool.”
Two local conservative activists contacted separately by The Wanderer for their reaction to the Maricopa County GOP leadership selection on January 14 had differing viewpoints.
Rob Haney, retired chairman of the county party organization, said: “The McCain slate of candidates won easily. In November of 2016, his operatives had the financial support and the endorsement of elected establishment politicians to defeat the conservative precinct committeemen who truly represented the platform principles of the party.
“McCain and his operatives are now firmly in control of the Arizona GOP and they represent McCain’s agenda,” Haney said. “There appear to be no Donald Trumps in Arizona, with his resources, to take on the McCain syndicate. They see how the establishment cabal was able to destroy politicians who stood up to the illegal-alien invasion.”
Haney pointed to three leading Arizona Republican officials who were maneuvered out of office over a few years by McCain’s establishment tactics.
“Former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio were all defeated for one reason,” Haney said. “They tried to enforce our current immigration laws and protect our citizens. McCain and our chambers of commerce fought them all the way, just as they have Donald Trump.”
Proxy votes are an important tool for McCain’s operatives, who recruit precinct committeemen just to provide proxies that are cast the way McCain wants, not to work on doing party tasks, Haney added.
The Wanderer has heard complaints about committeemen providing proxies who haven’t done party work in their districts. One conservative activist said that none of the officers in a certain district has “been to a meeting or participated in anything helping the district. That’s part of the purge.”
When this newspaper asked Haney to elaborate, he said, “There is no requirement for a (precinct committeeman) to do anything. They don’t even need to show up for meetings. . . . It is much like ballot harvesting.”
The proxy authorizes someone else to cast the vote. In the past, this writer has seen people with dozens of proxies hanging around their necks.
An example of ballot harvesting would be a person gathering a number of voters’ early ballots to deliver to a poll location on his own, instead of having individual voters show up.
In addition, Haney recalled instances when financial donations to the state Republican Party here sagged when its chairman wasn’t regarded as being in McCain’s good graces.
On the other hand, conservative GOP campaign consultant Constantin Querard told The Wanderer that sometimes candidates are described as being McCain people simply to slur them to grassroots activists.
Referring to the January 14 Maricopa County committeemen voting, Querard said: “While I can’t say for certain that none of the candidates were McCain supporters, the candidates for chairman, first vice chairman, and second vice chairman were not.
“At least at the county level, the lesson seems to have been learned that being a McCain supporter is a kiss of death, so the McCain forces appear to have quit running their own people and have shifted their efforts to supporting the conservative they like the best, or perhaps backing the conservative they dislike the least,” Querard said.
“Still, it is remarkable how the negative campaigning that goes on is no longer about someone’s positions on specific issues (life, taxes, Second Amendment, etc.) or whether they are conservatives or liberals. Now the only negative thing you hear about someone is that ‘They’re a McCain person,’ whether it is true or not,” Querard said. “That is not a good thing.
“Today, it appears the worst thing you can say about someone running for county party office is that they’re a McCain person, but the folks making the accusations aren’t always telling the truth,” he said.
“It has become a smear and a tactic because it’s effective. But those who abuse it for short-term gain will eventually wear out its effectiveness because, like the boy who cried wolf, eventually the voters in these elections will learn to disregard the charge.”
DeWit, the Trump campaign official, told The Wanderer that he’s “very excited. Our country needs Donald Trump. Our country needs a non-bureaucrat and a non-politician to fix the mess that the establishment politicians have put our country in.”
The country needs more businessmen like this getting into politics, DeWit said.
As for Democratic Party attacks on Russia, DeWit said, “I think the Democrats are overplaying the Russia so-called hacking, to try to downplay their loss in the election. To me, it’s just political gamesmanship.”
He told the crowd of committeemen, “The cabinet being assembled is going to go down in history as one of the best.”
In business as an investment professional before being elected state treasurer, DeWit told the crowd about his office’s recent successful financial performance.
A December 8 news release from the office headlined that Arizona endowment investments managed by the treasurer’s office “outperformed most endowments and pension funds in the United States,” including Dartmouth, MIT, Stanford, and Harvard.
Trump was scheduled to be inaugurated as president January 20, the day after this hardcopy issue of The Wanderer went to press.
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