President Barack Obama meets with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer in the Oval Office. Photo by Pete Souza/White House
The meeting was hyped as a “tense” “face off” over immigration between Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and President Barack Obama. Afterward, the governor said it turned out to be really “very cordial.” The two sides promised to talk more.
Jan Brewer
The Arizona Republic says the Gov. Jan Brewer sounded “emotional” when reached in her Washington, D.C. hotel room Wednesday. She told the newspaper that criticism about the way she’s been talking of her father’s death is “out of control.” Earlier, she told the Arizona Guardian she has been “fairly devastated” by the experience. All this leading up to today and what may be the most important meeting of her career with President Barack Obama at the White House.
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.
Jan Brewer
In an interview published earlier this week, Gov. Jan Brewer talked about how much she has been hurt by those who have called her a Nazi for signing Arizona’s new immigration law.
“The Nazi comments…they are awful,” she told the Arizona Republic. “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.”
Invoking her father’s death was a powerful defense against the harshest criticism of her career. But there was just one problem: Brewer’s father did not die during World War II.
How do you take on a sitting governor who’s beating you in the polls and also happens to be a woman? If you’re Buz Mills, the wealthy gun range owner and former Marine, you apparently tell voters it’s time to elect “a real man.”
The Arizona Guardian broke the story overnight. Mills recently sent voters a flier with big, bold text on the cover proclaiming: “It’s time to hire a real man to secure Arizona’s border.”
One of four Republicans challenging Gov. Jan Brewer in the primary, Mills then goes on to call himself “the man for the job” and “the man we can trust.” He also mentions he’s a pilot and a former Marine.
Buz Mills
Republican candidate for governor Buz Mills retreated on Sunday from his bizarre claim that Arizona’s public schools have as many administrators as they do teachers.
The wealthy gun range owner made the claim to Heat City two weeks ago in an exchange on Twitter. At the time, he was asked what he would like to see cut from the state budget to pay for his plan to beef up immigration enforcement.
“Education,” Mills tweeted. “1:1 ratio of administrators to teachers. Cut admin to appropriate level – improve education while freeing budget $$$”
But this weekend, Mills appeared on Sunday Square-Off, a weekly political news program that airs on the NBC-affiliated KPNX (Channel 12) in Phoenix.
Thank you to the Arizona Press Club, which awarded my work here on Heat City as well as in Phoenix Magazine with big honors in Saturday’s Best Journalism in Arizona contest.
Heat City won first place for breaking news in the Best in Arizona category for a series of exclusive stories about the arrests of two white supremacists suspected in the 2004 bombing of Scottsdale’s diversity office. Thanks to a source’s tip last June, I was able to break news of the arrests hours before any of the major local newspapers or wire services could catch up. Then I came back with two more stories about the fallout. (See links to stories below.)
Randy Miller
The new publisher of the East Valley Tribune, Randy Miller, is expected to announce any day now that the Mesa newspaper, which was on the brink of closure just six months ago, is profitable again.
At a Wednesday staff meeting, Miller told his employees the good news and promised to talk to any outside journalist who wishes to interview him about the success. Any journalist, that is, except for yours truly.
According to multiple sources inside the newspaper, Miller told staffers he has blacklisted me from any interviews, presumably because he doesn’t like my coverage of the Tribune’s financial woes before he bought it or my stories about the massive cuts he made when taking over.
Buz Mills
Buz Mills, the wealthy gun range owner running for governor, said on Monday he wants Arizona to eliminate educators so it can put more guards on the border and keep illegal immigrants in prison longer.
Becoming the latest to chime in on Arizona’s seething immigration debate, Mills released a campaign video that, among other things, laid out his plan to stop the flow of illegal immigrants across the southern border.
“If our border is a priority, we must prioritize accordingly,” Mills wrote on Twitter a short time later. “This will mean some currently funded programs will be eliminated.”
Something has Mark Casey a little rattled. And no wonder.
The news director of KPNX (Channel 12) in Phoenix, Casey told viewers Friday that his staff has become the target of threats during the past two weeks as the debate over immigration moved to the forefront with the signing of the state’s new immigration law.
“Yes, we have received threats of violence against us and against individuals on all sides of the issue,” Casey wrote in a letter posted on the station’s website.