Arizonans outside of Pima County used to feel smug & secure that the ‘Dimshevik’ stronghold there would never threaten them in the rest of the state. Fat chance of that today.
The uber-liberal tumor that’s controlled Pima County for decades has now metastasized into the Arizona body-politic. It’s become even more apparent as émigrés from California have flooded the state, bringing their political views with them.
For Tucson, it continues to deliver a dystopia of miserable outcomes for young people and local business interests, while the rest of Arizona is BOOMING with good family wage jobs. I’ve detailed this numerous times. These conditions will ultimately manifest as my friend, economic development guru Mark Lautman, warned Tucson’s biz community in 2014 and I described, in Woke Tucson’s Anti-Growth Ethos = Death by Demography.
You’d think someone could organize an effective political opposition to this nonsense, huh?
Sadly, if only there was a local, coherent, focused Republican opposition—from that part of the Tucson universe that isn’t a Bernie Sanders’ Twilight Zone episode, things might be different. For sure the Metro would be wealthier, more advanced, and genuinely attractive to outside investment with more social capital. A lot more social capital; something even moderate Tucson Democrats decry.
A major component of this tragic situation, (i.e. Tucson’s 50+ year uniparty governing kakistocracy), is simply the anemic, fossilized opposition, a.k.a. the Pima County GOP. They lack legitimacy. Especially in the eyes of Tucson’s cadre of young professionals, a nascent techno-elite, and any aspiring movers & shakers, i.e. pro-Tucson groups like SALC, Sun Corridor, and others.
Who can blame them? The PimaCo GOPers are seen as political yahoos, because—before anyone could remember, they keep on LOSING. Who wants to deal with LOSERS? In this regard, even Mr. Trump is right.
Terrible organizational skills, lack of strategic thinking, a breathless inability to vet local issues and get attractive local candidates (“losers can’t be choosey”), internal high school antics; their ‘farm club’ is a geriatric version of the old Tom Hank’s catty chick-flick, A League of their Own. Nobody even reads Wikipedia, especially the entry on the Narcissism of Small Differences, and that part where it says, “don’t make perfect the enemy of good”. Picky-Picky-Picky.
It’s about here you’d think other sincere, pro-Tucson groups would realize they need to hedge their bets vs. the looming 2030 demographic disaster, referenced above. And seize on this local GOP fecklessness as an opportunity to grab some wedge influence. Fat chance of that.
But none of the groups will confer any legitimacy on the other, and for valid reasons both ways. In reality, they all need each other to thwart the growing specter of a Hard-Left Tucson totally going off the rails.
Without a willingness to actually cooperate, or even collectively see the bigger picture unfolding, it stays the perpetual frozen argument.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. Just remember PimaCo GOP: LOSERS simply cannot be choosey.
Sellers is a Southpark Republican living in incorporated Oro Valley; his background is federal technology commercialization