With just two weeks left before it’s decided which Pima County Sheriff candidate will represent the Democratic Party in November’s general election, the race was shook up this week when the Pima County Democratic Party withdrew its support for one of the candidates due to how he responded to abuse allegations recently made by his now adult-aged daughter.
Kevin Kubitskey is a retired sergeant for the Pima County Sheriff’s Office. He is seeking to be the Democrat who takes on Sheriff Mark Napier, a Republican, in the Nov. 3. But first, Kubitskey has to beat fellow Democrat Chris Nanos, his former boss and former sheriff.
Last weekend, Kubitskey’s biological daughter posted to social media that she had been the victim of physical, sexual, and mental abuse by her father from ages 8 to 12. The posting contained no documentation of the abuse, nor of her claim that Kubitskey “decided to give his rights up to me.”
Kubitskey, who is hoping to become Pima County’s youngest sheriff in decades, is running on a platform of “safety, integrity, diversity.” He took to social media Monday morning to address his daughter’s mental health, as well as what he called “false and unsubstantiated” abuse accusations he says were previously investigated by state child welfare officials and two police agencies.
But Kubitskey also spent an equal amount of time blaming Nanos for the fact the abuse allegations became public. And that, according to a statement released Tuesday, didn’t set well with the Pima County Democratic Party. In fact, it led to an emergency session of the organization’s executive committee and a vote on whether Kubitskey represented “the values of the Democratic Party.”
The vote ended with Kubitskey officially losing the party’s backing.
“Our decision to withdraw support is based on the manner by which his campaign responded to those allegations,” the statement reads in part. “His response included the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive medical information about a family member and an accusation that a political opponent orchestrated the release of the allegations.”
The candidate’s response to the allegations was posted on his Kubitskey4Sheriff Facebook page.
“First and foremost, I will start by saying that I am heartbroken that my daughter is dragged into a situation and manipulated by my opponent that had knowledge of the troubled custodial relationship between me and my ex-wife,” he posted. “My daughter did not and does not deserve this to go on.”
He also expressed concern for his daughter and her mental well-being.
“I have not and would not do anything to my daughter to cause her harm,” he wrote. “The final order encompassed reunification on both sides. When this failed for other reasons, I made the hardest decision I have had to ever do. I chose to keep joint custody and suspend my visitation to prevent furthered alienation. The laws and orders of the court were followed. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think about my daughter.”
But Kubitskey says it is Nanos, his former boss and current opponent, who bears responsibility for the allegations being disseminated.
“My estranged daughter has mental health issues that my opponent Chris Nanos is now exploiting and trying to use to his political advantage” Kubitskey alleges.
“The desperation of Nanos is proof that my campaign is succeeding as his is failing. Rather than succeeding in debates and engaging with the public, Nanos is bringing this election into the gutter, with politics that exploit private family matters.”
Kubitskey joined PCSD after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. He says the “challenges” surrounding his daughter “were well known in the department for years” and he believes Nanos is sharing it at this stage of the election as a form of “fear, intimidation and lies.”
In his comments, Kubitskey claimed he had “evidence” which connects the Nanos campaign to the release of the abuse allegations. He also contended that if Nanos had children himself “he would have understood how wrong his actions are exploiting family matters for political gain.”
However, Kubitskey did not offer to share the evidence he claimed to have collected. And while he asked the media to use “professional and investigatory discretion and judgement” in addressing the matter, Kubitskey said he would refrain from providing any further details, citing his daughter’s privacy.
“I will remain focused on bringing a new day to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department,” he said. “I will bring true reform.”
Nanos has denied being behind any smear campaign nor taking advantage of the daughter’s personal issues for political benefit.
Some Kubitskey supporters noted the timing of the daughter’s accusation, which appears to have been posted just hours after Napier released a statement suggesting that an Arizona Attorney General’s Office investigation of the illegal expenditure of RICO funds had found Nanos and his predecessor Clarence Dupnik had “some responsibility” for the illegal activities.
The 13-page report, however, which took the AG’s office three years to prepare, did not focus in any detail on Nanos or Dupnik who was sheriff from 1980 to 2015. Nanos was appointed as Sheriff in August 2015 when Dupnik retired.
Nanos was defeated by Napier in November 2016 in the midst of an FBI investigation which led to federal charges being filed against one lone PCSD employee.