TUCSON, Feb. 22 -
Tucson Weekly, sponsor of Project White House 2012, today endorsed Richard Grayson in next week's Arizona Green Party presidential primary and Sarah Gonzales in the Arizona Republican Party presidential preference primary. The newspaper's editorial board
called Gonzales "severely awesome," noting that she was the only Latina among the many white male candidates running for the Republican nomination.
The editorial wrote this about Grayson, co-chair of the Pinal County Greens:
All of the Greens have done a lot to express their plans through Project White House, but we have been most impressed with Richard Grayson,
including his plan to deport Republicans back to the 18th century, where they could be more comfortable with their tricorner hats and other Tea Party garb, and his demand that Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu be nicer to his ex-boyfriends. Few of the Project White House candidates have done a better job of responding to the issues of the day.
"I am very grateful to everyone at Tucson Weekly for this endorsement," said Grayson, reached in Brooklyn at a campaign fundraiser. "I'm so excited I don't know whether to scream or eat a banana."
Apache Junction, Ariz., Jan. 20 -
Today's Tucson Weekly blog presented a proposal by Pinal County Greens Co-Chair Richard Grayson, a candidate in the February 28 Arizona Green Party presidential preference primary, to deport all Republicans:
Presidential Candidate Richard Grayson: Deport All Republicans—To the America They Really Love!
Posted by Jim Nintzel on Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 10:30 AM
Presidential candidate Richard Grayson, who is running as a Green in Arizona's Feb. 28 presidential primary, offers a new policy proposal: Deport all Republicans!
Here's Grayson's statement:
If by some fluke, I'm elected President, the first thing I will do is to take steps to make the United States great again by deporting all of those who've ruined our country, and the great state of Arizona, in recent years:
That's right, I plan to deport all Republicans.
I know what you're saying: "Richard, you're a liberal lawyer and a college professor who's taught constitutional history, not an ignorant asshole like Russell Pearce and the others who think that the Fourteenth Amendment's right to birthright citizenship can be taken away. How can you 'deport' American citizens? What country would you deport them to? And how could you do this without violating dozens of the Republicans' constitutional rights from due process to equal protection?"
I understand these concerns, of course. And though I would move as quickly as possible to deport all Republicans — it's not wise to keep vermin around your house any longer than necessary — I would not deport them to any foreign country.
Instead, I would launch a crash program, a kind of Manhattan Project, to get our most brilliant scientists to create a viable way to send people back into the past. Time travel will allow me to deport the Republicans to what is, indeed, American soil — but they'd be deported back to the eighteenth century!
And this, of course, would get around the problem of denying Republicans' constitutional rights. The GOP — soon to be G-O-N-E — would voluntarily self-deport to the 1700s.
After, all the fashion-challenged angry old white people of the Tea Party already love to gallivant around in colonial garb. They'd have a place where they could strut in their three-cornered hats and white leggings and not look ridiculously out of place.
In the eighteenth century, Republicans could live in an America where minorities did not have equal rights (African Americans were slaves; Native Americans were massacred), where abortion and homosexuality were, if they ever occurred, punishable by death; where there was no ACLU, no Planned Parenthood, no labor unions, no minimum wage, no "entitlements," no food stamps, no "safety net," no ethnic studies, no Lady Gaga, no hip-hop, and few if any vegans, hippies, hipsters, atheists, environmentalists, Darwinists or alternative weeklies.
Everyone would be better off. The Republicans would be much happier living in the past. In the 1700s they'd be up-to-date rather than throwbacks to a previous era, constantly trying to undo the New Deal and the science of the past two centuries. Instead of longing for a bygone America, they'd be living in a place they'd rather be: a bygone America.
(Of course, if they wanted to stay in Arizona, they'd be living under the Spanish empire, but hey, they probably would really love the Inquisition!)
And with all Republicans deported, the rest of us here in the United States could actually achieve some progress.
Twenty-first century America: Love it or leave it.
Hasta la vista, Republicans!
Apache Junction, Ariz., Jan. 10 -
Today the Pinal County Greens, members of the Arizona Green Party in Pinal County, attended the official drawing for the Arizona Green Party presidential primary ballot at the Historic Senate Chambers at the State Capitol. Here is a report by presidential candidate and Pinal County Greens co-chair Richard Grayson:
This morning we were again at the Arizona State Capitol
in downtown Phoenix for the official drawing for the Arizona presidential preference primary ballot order
for the Green and Republican parties.
Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett presided as candidates or their representatives drew lots
from a historic trophy, given by the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1915 to the USS Arizona in 1915,
and announced the results. We went up first of all the candidates because we were the first Green to file,
and had our campaign manager, Bunny Greenblatt, draw for us.
She handed the paper to Secretary Bennett and he announced that we got ballot position five out of the six candidates in the February 28 primary. We had made sure to wear all Green for luck, but it didn't work.
Neither did evil Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who drew number 17 out of 23 for Texas Governor Rick Perry on the Republican ballot.
Many of the candidates are part of Project White House 2012,
a civic project of the Tucson Weekly newspaper, which has encouraged ordinary people to get on the ballot.
All of Secretary Bennett's staff worked hard to make this a great event and were extremely helpful to everyone.
Secretary Bennett himself, using white gloves, drew for those candidates who weren't there, and one of his staff members, as he said, "played Vanna White" and put up the candidate's name in the proper ballot order. (Bunny and I did it ourselves.)
It was a tense moment as Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin went to draw for Mitt Romney, who got ballot position number 9, which the Speaker hopes was good enough to get him a job as undersecretary of something.
When Sheriff Arpaio went up to draw for Rick Perry,
he apparently noticed Bunny sitting next to me. The next we thing we knew, a deputy asked her for proof that she wasn't in this country illegally.
Actually more annoying to Bunny was news radio station KFYI getting her name wrong:
Arizona's lax requirements to get on the ballot leads to colorful candidates on the ballot. Green Party candidate Richard Grayson brought his stuffed animal, Bunny Green Black, who he claims is his campaign manager to pick his ballot number.
This is presidential candidate Gerard Davis of Phoenix, who was accompanied by his wife Sonya and their child. He is number 6 out of six on the Green Party ballot, but the last shall be first, according to Rick Santorum (whose representative, a really nice man, was wearing a sweater vest just like his candidate).
This is Kip Dean, one of the Republican presidential candidates you've never heard of, perhaps because unlike Romney, Paul, Gingrich, Santorum, Perry, Santorum, Bachmann, Cain and the serious ones, Kip actually knows that we're not in the 1950s anymore and he's not running for leader of Leave It to Beaverland.
Kip wrote this and posted this pic on Facebook:
Favorite part of my day--the rolling of Sheriff Joe's eyes and his comment of "gawd" when he saw Richard Grayson's campaign manager (the bunny hand puppet pictured in the middle of us) pull his ballot spot slip for the Green Party Presidential Primary. My thoughts were different as I thought the bunny puppet was smarter than John Huntsman's campaign staff and Rick Perry's racist jackass slip puller (Joe himself).
These people in the back looked like politicians and seemed out of place.
The press was really interested in why former Utah Governor and Ambassador to China did not make the ballot when all anyone had to do was sign a simple declaration of candidacy and get it notarized. Secretary Bennett said that if Gov. Huntsman was going to challenge his not being on the Arizona ballot, he'd better do it fast because Maricopa County planned to start printing their ballots tonight.
Arizona Green Party co-chair Angel Torres drew for both of the presidential candidates officially recognized by the Green Party of the United States, Jill Stein and Kent Mesplay, and at the end of the drawing took photos of the ballot so the Arizona Green Party will know which of its own candidates it will sue to kick off the ballot this year.
Bunny and I were grateful to everyone at the Secretary of State's office and to all the fine candidates running in the Arizona presidential preference election.
It was wonderful to see American democracy at work, sort of.
