Redistricting -- How low will they go?

Without recapping all of the disturbing news from the last week, I will tell you that just this morning I've received a tip on on further trouble Tea Party interests are planning to cause at the Public Outreach Hearings.

Last night, the following Action Alert was circulated (included a google map of the area/campus):

Sent: Tue, Jul 19, 2011 10:32 pm
Subject: Redistricting Action Alert

Open Phoenix Redistricting Meeting this Thursday 7-21-11 at 6:00 pm

South Mountain Community College
SU 100A
7050 South 24th St
Phoenix, AZ 85402

A way to get there:  Go South on 24th Street from Buckeye Road.
I10, I17 and Hiway 60 have no exit to 24th Street South of the Airport
(try maybe 16th Street Exit from I17 or Hiway 60)


The (A) on the map may be a distraction.   Map of Campus is NOT easily available.

The Obama/Soros/SEIU/MoveOn/AFL-CIO have taken over our Redistricting. The SEIU and Move.On.org will be out in force at the above open meeting. Arizona may change from a Red State to a Blue State if these guys do the redistricting (Gerrymandering). We may have no more Super Majority. We may have no more Tea Party Freshmen if these people have their way.

If you are Tea Party, please bring your YELLOW tea party badge, scarf, "Don't Tread on Me" flag (little)-even copies off your computer or a yellow shirt hidden by something or keep in purse/bag until seated. Last time they did not require you to register so why do so. The Independent Redistricting Committee has NOT published an Agenda (not available online yet - typical so may need to get our word out with signs). The Agenda is supposed to be available at http://www.azredistricting.org.

The Goal is NOT to replace Colleen Coyle Mathias. The Commission will just take the next independent "plant" and replace her. Our Focus should be on process (not 1 person). The
Goal is to inform the media and the Commission that we won't stand for the hijacking of the political process. The current Commission is NOT Fair, Transparent, or Non-Partisan"

Suggested Stages:
(1) Sign bearers should be outside the College entrance by at least by 5:30pm. Hopefully because the size of the crowd and the anger on the blogs, the Media will show. The agenda may not allow us to get the "non-partisan" concerns out in the meeting,
Talking points below.

(2) Meeting starts and activists put on their YELLOW badges, scarfs, flags, etc to scare the heck out of them! The leftists are saying we are arriving in buses, are funded by PAC's, and are well organized!!! They are worried!! They KNOW this process is unfair.

(3) More people arrive so others can leave. My guess is that the meeting room should hold everyone so you don’t have to worry about seats.

(4) Speakers willing to stay to end or arrive ??8pm? You will be asked to state your name and your affiliation. As you wish on your name-the hearing is recorded. The Left is trying to show this as Republican tantrum vs. Democrats. Better to state just representing myself or freedom activist,etc. If you put as subject on the card the Left's buzz words:"Communities of Interest" or "Competitive Districts" so this will not give you away and they'll put you at the very end.

They will probably be showing low detail maps for Arizona. It may be in your best interest to have a map of your own Congressional District/Legislative District.


If you don't have any maps, here is where to find them on the Internet:

http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/images/pdf/congdist/pagecgd112_az.pdf

http://recorder.maricopa.gov/electionmaps/


Talking Points from the Folks Working Behind the Scenes:

This commission has not engendered the trust of the people that the process will be fair, open and honest. People are frustrated because proposition 106 was supposed to take the redistricting process out of the back rooms of the legislature and bring it into the light of day. Sadly, almost half the time the current commission has met has been in executive sessions behind closed doors

The second major decision was the hiring of legal representation. Much of the work was done in E-Sessions and then in the end the Democrat commissioners were able to have their choice of legal counsel but the Republican commissioners were not afforded the same opportunity. ( for their own legal counsel)

The commission recently selected Strategic Telemetry (ST) as their mapping consultant. Some of ST’s most recent clients include the 2008 Obama for President Campaign ( SEIU,MoveOn.org, Gov Jerry Brown, John Kerry, State Dem parties). ST's website has been scrubbed "clean" thanks to all the people who called, emailed, and plain just yelled "no". 

Prior to the scrubbing a number of key employees were listed as 'Progressives'. 

Ken Strasma, the President of ST, use to be the Policy Director for the National Committee for an Effective Congress. NCEC's web site, the NCEC claims to be “one of the most influential political organizations having helped elect hundreds of progressive candidates to congress.” ST's website formerly stated they specialized in electing progressive candidates.

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Committee has just hired as their mapping consultant the firm headed by someone who was a policy director for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) redistricting, an extremely partisan organization. One wonders if the commission would have hired them had Mr. Strasma worked for the RNC.

The last commission held almost three times as many meetings. Since Arizona is almost twice the size of Wisconsin, over twice the size of New York and 1600 times the size of Washington DC we need more than 20 meetings if this commission truly wants public input into the redistricting process.

As part of the contract the AZIRC has requested that to the greatest extent practical maps will be drawn in Arizona with support from ST’s offices in New York, Wisconsin and Washington DC. That means there will be less input and less observation of the process. The last commission drew ALL their maps in Arizona with no outside support. Recently the GOP Voter Vault information went to WDC. Since Strategic Telemetry was mostly a 'Data Mining” site and NOT a political mapping site, they now have our GOP info. 

More Talking Points:

Strategic Telemetry's previous clients are Pres. Obama, SEIU, MoveOn.org, AFL-CIO, John Kerry, Gov Jerry Brown, many State Dem parties. 

ST is not an expert mapping company. ST advises progessive campaigns (per website). At the last Phoenix meeting, they said they would need time to learn the mapping software package, which is a standard in the industry.

Prop 106 specifically states that voter records are to NOT be used in mapping. For the last week ST has been downloading the GOP Voter Vault data (your voting records) to WDC .

The State Procurement Office is supposed to approve all state contracts and they walked out on the negotiations for ST's contract. Mayor Phil Gordon's manager was hired to be the Executive Director of the Commission, wrote the ST contract and authorized it himself.

Chairwoman Colleen Coyle Mathias, a recent Independent, lied on questions 1,6,8 on her application about the status of her attorney husband. Both Mathis and her husband donate to progressive candidates including donations to President Obama. Her husband was a PAID campaign manager for a Democratic party candidate. Colleen was awarded a job managing Obama's Stimulus Funds in Tucson in 2009 which was NOT stated on her application for this ARC job. 

More Talking Points

Prohibits both sides from having legal counsel both liberals
Closed Door sessions-more than half
No online agendas; 2 mos late Minutes
Meetings announced then cancelled
Meetings held weekdays in daytime so many taxpayers cannot attend
Moved public comments from the beginning of meeting to the end and many meetings were dragged out to 4-5 hrs

Source: campaign.r20.constantcontact.com

This ACTION ALERT is sent with your Email address BCC to protect your identity.
If you would like to be removed from this Action Alert List,
send an Email to viewpoint04@cox.net with Remove Me in the subject line.
We only send Action Alerts when we consider it important.

---------

Of course, the first misleading statement is that a campus map is not readily available.  The Arizona Eagletarian posted a campus map a day or so ago.

The next statement in the note above establishes the "boogeyman". "Obama/Soros/SEIU/MoveOn/AFL-CIO have taken over our Redistricting."  Of course, they have NO evidence of any such thing.  But in the minds of easily distracted and deceived people, they apparently do not need evidence.

Or, like Proud Terri did during her unrebutted propaganda interview on Tucson's PBS station on Monday night, all they have to do is SAY they have evidence.  When even journalists fail to make them prove their claim, they become more bold in their outrageous claims.


Another bald-faced lie: no agenda has been published for these meetings.  First off, anyone who wants to understand what the deal is with these meetings already knows that the primary agenda item will be allowing public testimony.  Second, an agenda was published for THIS meeting, well before the action alert was transmitted (this note was sent at 10:32pm last night, the agenda was posted at 4:49pm). 



Here's the bottom line, they use their outrageous fearmongering rhetoric to preface their genuine fear, that if "these people" get their way, we will have no more supermajority and no more tea party freshmen.


Or, do they use the outrageous rhetoric to distract journalists?  Tea Party interests likely don't care that voter registration numbers do not justify allowing the GOP to have a supermajority in the state legislature.  

Wouldn't "These people" (as used by the fearmonger above) want safe districts for Liberal politicians? If "these people" (the people who passed Prop 106 in 2000) get their way, the redistricting will result in COMPETITIVE DISTRICTS. And if Tea Party politicians then do adequately make their case to a broader range of voters in each district, they would still get to have supermajorities.  


Could it be that the underlying fear behind this action alert is that they do NOT and will NOT appeal to a majority of Arizonans?


Btw, New York State, according to the US Census Bureau, had a population of 19,378,102 in 2010.  Arizona is listed as having 6,392,017 in the same year.  To me, that says New York is three times the size of Arizona, population-wise.  So, how many more specious claims will we see come out from this poorly informed set of citizens?

------

This just in, the AIRC has posted the agenda for the Public Outreach Hearing in Nogales on Friday at 6pm.  It includes the address. For directions, go to google maps (I couldn't link directly to a map for this location, but you can get such a map by putting the location in at the link provided).