Jan Brewer
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer doubled down Wednesday on her claim that her father “died fighting the Nazi regime,” despite acknowledging that he succumbed to lung disease in suburban California 10 years after World War II ended.
Facing accusations that she embellished the facts of his death in a recent newspaper interview, Brewer refused to back away from the quote that got her in trouble.
Brewer released a statement late in the day defending herself and saying her father helped “free Europe from Hitler’s grip” by working in Nevada as a civilian supervisor of a munitions depot during the war.
She also said many of those “who lost their lives in World War II never set foot on the battlefield.”
At the same time, the governor conceded that her father, Wilford Drinkwine, died long after World War II had ended. He passed away in 1955 in California after a lengthy battle with lung disease.
The governor said she believes her father’s death was related to the “hazardous chemicals and toxic fumes” he was exposed to at the depot. “My father’s patriotism and sacrifice needs no embellishment,” she said.
Questions about the governor’s comments began to emerge Tuesday after the Arizona Republic published a story looking at her handling of the state’s new immigration law.
In the piece, Brewer responded to protesters who have carried signs depicting her as a Nazi for signing the law in April.
“The Nazi comments…they are awful,” she told the newspaper. “Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that…and then to have them call me Hitler’s daughter. It hurts.”
The Arizona Guardian was the first to report the true facts of her father’s death on Tuesday. The story has caught fire since then, with blogs and news outlets nationwide latching onto it and Arizona Democrats accusing Brewer, a Republican, of stretching the truth.
Jennifer Johnson, an Arizona Democratic Party spokeswoman, told KTAR (92.3 FM) the governor’s quotes were “classic political embellishment.”
“She used words that made it sound like her father died on the battlefield fighting the Nazis,” Johnson told the radio station.
Brewer is in Washington, D.C. this week. She is scheduled to meet with President Barack Obama on Thursday to talk about immigration.
Read Brewer’s full statement: [PDF]