The Elect Ray Carroll campaign has fabricated a smear campaign in order to conduct a smear campaign against Carroll’s opponent, Sean Collins. Beth Ford, Pima County Treasurer, has quickly squandered years of accumulated treasure in the form of credibility, in order to assist Carroll’s latest attack in the Pima County Supervisors District 4 race.
Last spring, Ford wrongly accused Collins of using her attempt to sound like a hard-nosed reformer against Ray Carroll at a political event. Ford had bragged months ago, that she denied an expenditure request by Carroll as proof that she was diligently overseeing the County coffers.
When it came to Ford’s attention that former State Legislator Randy Graf was telling people about Carroll’s highly questionable expense request, she immediately backtracked and claimed in a letter, that Carroll’s trip to his hometown of Chicago was a permissible expense and used the opportunity to disparage candidate Sean Collins. In that same letter, she claimed that the expense records had been destroyed.
She insisted that Graf and Collins refrain from telling people of Graf’s experience with her. Collins, for his part, said that his campaign would not make an issue of the expense report out of courtesy to her.
Despite Collins’s kept pledge, his past week, Ford made a radio ad alleging that the Collins campaign created a smear campaign they didn’t create in order to smear the Collin’s campaign. According to various sources, Ford agreed to make the ads in an effort to win back the desperately needed financial support of the establishment GOP, in her own contested election.
Graf has issued a statement in order to set the record straight:
For the record, I support Sean Collins and am the person who shared the comments made years ago by Beth Ford with the Collins campaign. Beth Ford’s letter raises a few questions:
1. When directly asked if she had ever denied a claim, why did she volunteer this story of Ray and his Chicago trip?
2. Why did Ray submit and why did she have to ask for additional documentation outside the approved conference days?
3. Beth Ford says this submission took place “before” the trip but in recent comments Ray says upon attending the conference he had an opportunity to meet with a transportation official which prompted his reimbursement request. What is the truth, before or after?
4. According to Treasurer Ford, documents that can shed light on this have been destroyed, per county records retention requirements leaving us no evidence of the transactions.
This statement is an attempt to put factual information in the hands of the voters of District 4. I am speaking for myself and am in no way representing the Collins for Supervisor campaign.
May 3, 2012
Beth Ford
Pima County Treasurer
115 North Church Avenue
Tucson, AZ 85701-1109Dear Honorable Ms. Ford,
I am in receipt of the letter you sent to Sean Collins dated April 30, 2012 and copied to me.
I hold no position with and do not speak for Sean or the Collins campaign. I wholeheartedly support his efforts however to bring new leadership to Pima County by replacing Ray Carroll as the District 4 Supervisor. Sean Collins is a man of impeccable values, character and standing in the community. I suspect that, purely as a matter of courtesy to you, and because there are far more important and substantive issues to discuss in this campaign, he will cede to your request and discontinue referencing the incident you mention in the letter. But I will leave that decision to him, of course.
I heard you make the comments alleged in Sean Collins’ circular when you spoke before the Pima County Republican Club luncheon at the Sabbar Shrine Temple on South Tucson Blvd. The notes I took that day stated, “Ray Carroll had a travel voucher questioned & denied by Treasurer Beth Ford. He tried to have the taxpayer cover an extra travel day to Chicago.” I stand by my notes (which I still have in my possession as proof of the comments made) and my recollections of your comments that day.
While you tried to downplay the incident in our conversation a few weeks ago, your comments did not refute the facts of the case. I never said to you or to anyone else that I “couldn’t wait to use Mr. Carroll submitting a falsified travel claim in the Sean Collins campaign.” I have served in elected office and been the Republican nominee for Congress, that is not my style.
You demand an apology from Mr. Collins for associating you with a lie and demeaning your character, yet the reference on his campaign material does no such thing. It actually compliments you for doing a thorough job.
I understand the politics involved in the letter you sent and the uncomfortable position this may have created for you with the Supervisor in question. I am disappointed however that you associate me with a lie and demean my character while calling for an apology from someone that owes you none.
That being said, and though the request was not to me, solely as a courtesy to you and your office and because I also believe there are many other important failures of Mr. Carroll to discuss in this campaign, I personally will refrain from mentioning this incident again. However, if the matter is pursued further by you or others, I will defend the truth of the allegations made, as documented not only by my recollection but by contemporaneous notes I made at the time you made your statements about Mr. Carroll.
Sincerely,
Randy Graf