By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Two pieces of politics from the not-too-distant past reappeared here while the virtual Republican National Convention began in late August far to the east.
One of the pieces was a five-year-old news report on a liberal activist who learned a lesson about potential firearms dangers existing for police. The other piece was about some opportunists and other Republicans who don’t mind getting on board with left-wing Democrats.
On August 24 blogger Fr. John Zuhlsdorf (wdtprs.com) posted a five-year old video from Fox 10 Phoenix, KSAZ-TV, showing a local civil-rights activist, Rev. Jarrett Maupin, accepting an invitation to participate in a use-of-force training by the local Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
The previous month in 2015, the television station recalled, Maupin led marches on Phoenix Police headquarters after an officer shot an unarmed man. A television news report showed Maupin marching down the street with a bullhorn saying, “We want his badge! We want his gun!”
The subsequent sheriff’s office training put Maupin through three simulations. In the first, “Deputy” Maupin responds to a call that a man is casing vehicles in a parking lot. The man claims he’s just looking for his vehicle. As Maupin asks what kind of car he drives, the man briefly steps halfway behind a vehicle then comes out and “shoots” Maupin with a handgun.
The second simulation has two men shoving each other around. When Maupin calls out to them, the larger man of the two aggressively approaches Maupin, prompting the “deputy” to “shoot” the unarmed tough guy.
Maupin explained, “He rushed me . . . I felt that it was an imminent threat. I didn’t necessarily see him armed, but he came clearly to do some harm to the officer, to my person.”
In the third simulation, Maupin forces a suspected burglar facedown to the ground, puts a handgun directly against the man’s back and a knee on his lower back to restrain him while searching for weapons. No shots fired this time, but a knife found hidden in his waistband.
Maupin then explained to a television interviewer, “I didn’t understand how important compliance was” when a citizen has attracted the suspicions of an officer. “Yeah, my attitude has changed….People need to comply with the orders of law-enforcement officers for their own sake.”
A Phoenix man who recently viewed this video, James Asher, D.O., told The Wanderer on August 25 that the need for compliance should have been obvious anyway, but “God bless him for coming to the truth and understanding of the situation.”
Two recent explicit videos that showed black men being shot by police — one incident in Atlanta and one in Kenosha, Wis. — both revealed the civilians struggling with police officers and then running or walking away before being shot. In Atlanta the man took an officer’s Taser and fired it while running away. In Kenosha the man, without an okay, bent through an automobile door, possibly to get something.
In a third incident, when George Floyd was pinned to the ground by a Minneapolis officer before dying, although he wasn’t shot, Floyd first had struggled and resisted getting into a police car.
No matter how innocent a civilian may believe his situation to be, it’s best to follow officers’ orders at the time, stay alive, then take any complaint to official investigators later.
In a separate recent development, some former Republican officeholders announced they supported Democrat Joe Biden for president. Perhaps the best-known of these was one-term, open-borders U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, of Arizona, who already had voiced his sanctimonious disgust with Donald Trump during his first presidential race, in 2016.
Nor was it a surprise to see the names of pro-abortion liberal Republicans like former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman or Jim Kolbe, a former southern Arizona congressman.
The Washington, D.C., swamp also figured in this endorsement.
Washington Examiner columnist Timothy Carney posted on August 24 that biotech lobbyist Jim Greenwood “isn’t the only lobbyist or quasi-lobbyist on the list of Republicans for Biden. Twelve of the 27 names on that list show up in the Revolving Door database run by the Center for Responsive Politics. Three of them are at just one firm.”
Carney proceeded to name them then concluded: “There are many reasons for a Republican to oppose Trump. For pro-choice, pro-big-spending Republicans like most of those above, there’s plenty of reason to vote for Biden. But we ought to at least consider that when they’re backing Biden, they may be trying to bolster their clients’ interests.”
Phoenix radio talk host Seth Leibsohn (KKNT, 960 AM) recalled on August 24 that these Republicans preferring a liberal Dem presidential ticket had a historical echo back in 1984 when a now-forgotten man named John Smith headed a group named “Republicans for Mondale and Ferraro” that opposed incumbent GOP President Ronald Reagan, who was running for re-election.
Democrat Walter Mondale was a veteran liberal Minnesota U.S. senator, while Geraldine Ferraro was a pro-abortion New York bad Catholic and congresswoman.
A July 30, 1984, news story by United Press International said this “small group” from the GOP said that “President Reagan has ‘gone against the grain’ of traditional GOP values and dragged the party to the far right.” The story quoted Smith that “We think the Democrats have moved to the center and the Republicans to the far right.”
The UPI said about 50 members of Smith’s group rallied outside Reagan’s campaign offices in Manhattan, while it had 1,200 members nationwide, about 700 of them women.
The story said Smith said that its support “‘increased dramatically’ when Geraldine Ferraro was nominated for vice president.”
The chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, Kelli Ward, D.O., replied to Flake’s support for Biden with a statement on August 24: “Jeff Flake is in no man’s land. His predicament today is a direct result of his own grandstanding and virtue signaling — actions that alienated him from anyone and everyone who believes in Republican values and that resulted in his failure to run for re-election after a single term in the Senate due to a lack of support.
“Flake has done this to himself, allowing anger, jealousy, and a deep-seated personal vendetta against President Trump to poison his relationship with Republicans,” Ward said.
“With nowhere left to turn and call home, Flake has finally decided to formalize his alliance with the most extreme, far-left Democrat presidential ticket in modern U.S. history. A Biden-Harris presidency would mean open borders, higher taxes, government-run health care, and a total shutdown of our economy,” she said.
“It’s clear now to any reasonable observer that Flake has turned his back on Arizonans and Republicans nationwide in his vain pursuit of political gain,” Ward said.
Both Flake and another endorser, former Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich, said they trusted in Biden’s moderation, ignoring the fact that Biden just last year caved into supporting full tax funding for permissive abortion when “progressives” pushed him for that. Biden previously supported permissive abortion but with limits on its taxpayer support.
And in recent weeks Biden swallowed more of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’ agenda in order to achieve Democrat “unity.”
In other Arizona news, internationally known former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 88 years of age, lost his third election in a row in August and reportedly said he wouldn’t run for office again.
After serving six four-year terms as sheriff here, Arpaio lost his re-election bid to Democrat Paul Penzone in 2016 after years of Arizona’s open-borders political establishment hammering Arpaio for opposing massive illegal immigration.
Proclaiming he had a dream to serve in the U.S. Senate under President Trump, Arpaio then came in third in the 2018 Arizona Republican primary for that seat, behind winner Martha McSally and second-place finisher Kelli Ward. Ward subsequently was elected state Republican chairwoman by state GOP committeemen.
Although the vigorous Arpaio may have had the stamina to serve a fresh term as sheriff — Arpaio appears much healthier than wan Democrat Joe Biden, who is a decade younger than Arpaio — the former sheriff reportedly said he thinks some supporters believed it was time for him to move on from politics.
Still, in this year’s GOP primary Arpaio took 35 percent of the vote in a three-way race, according to the Maricopa County Elections Department, only two percent behind winner Jerry Sheridan, his own former chief deputy.
Arpaio is a Catholic born in Springfield, Mass., while Sheridan was born in Queens, N.Y., and attended Catholic school through the twelfth grade.
Finishing third for the sheriff nomination was local police officer Mike Crawford, with 26 percent of a total vote of more than 417,000 cast.
A fan of Arpaio’s who wasn’t in his corner for this race told The Wanderer on August 25: “Arpaio will always have a solid base of support, but his days of winning general elections are over, and voters were smart enough to realize that they needed someone else if they were going to beat Democrat Paul Penzone.
“Sheridan spent his entire life in that department starting from the bottom and making his way all the way to the chief deputy position (Number Two in the department), so he has the experience needed to fix the damage Penzone has done,” said this observer, who declined to be identified because of his political position.
Rob Haney, a retired chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party, told The Wanderer on August 24: “If Crawford had not run, Sheridan would have won overwhelmingly. The Crawford voters were not Arpaio voters. Unfortunately, Sheridan doesn’t have Arpaio’s war chest, so I regrettably look for Penzone with his strong financial backing to win in November.”
Another Delay For Abortionist
In a final piece of Maricopa County news, abortionist Ronald Yunis, M.D., continues to receive delays in Superior Court after he was arrested on October 18, 2019, briefly jailed and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, then released on his own recognizance to return to his work at the Acacia Women’s Center abortuary.
Yunis was shown in a video briefly pointing what looked like a handgun as he drove from the center’s parking lot, past a pro-lifer on the public sidewalk outside the clinic, on October 10. Despite pro-lifers immediately reporting the incident, Phoenix police delayed just over a week before arresting him, until the video generated widespread public pressure.
The abortionist’s attorneys told the court on April 20, “As the court is aware, the parties are in discussions and are actively seeking a pre-idictment (sic) to the case. However, given recent World events, and the collateral consequences of the (corona) virus, the parties have conferred and agreed additional time is needed to finalize these discussions.”
After more delay, as of August 20 Yunis was granted a not-guilty arraignment continuation until September 22 due to a motion concerning the poor health of the defense attorney’s father in Prescott, Ariz., more than 90 miles north of Phoenix.
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