As children, we were taught the importance of saying nothing at all if we couldn’t say something nice (thank you Disney and Thumper). It is also wise at times to say nothing so you don’t draw negative attention to yourself.
Two candidates running for Arizona Secretary of State recently had a hard time counting to 10 and moving on in the face of critical comments. And for one of the candidates, it led to being schooled by none less than Arizona Senate President Karen Fann.
The schooling occurred last week when Maricopa County confirmed a change in the brand of pen (from Pentel to Papermate) available to voters at voting centers during the upcoming general election. Fann asked in a witty Twitter comment if it was known what brand of paper the county will be using to print ballots at its voting centers.
Her comment harkened back to questions raised during the Senate’s review of how Maricopa County conducted the 2020 General Election about whether the county’s voting centers used a different brand or different weight of paper than what was specified by county procedures.
The pen and paper matter could have ended with Fann’s tweet. But Adrian Fontes, the current Democratic nominee for Secretary of State, snapped back at the Senate President, thus drawing even more attention to the fact it was his performance as Maricopa County Recorder which led to several lawsuits concerning the 2020 election cycle.
Those lawsuits included one that ended with a court order in 2020 prohibiting Fontes from violating state law with his plan to mail ballots to all registered voters, even those not signed up for getting their ballots by mail. Another resulted in the Arizona Supreme Court ordering Maricopa County to pay nearly $58,000 in attorney’s fees after Fontes created his own instructions for voters needing to fix an error on their 2020 General Election ballots.
Chief Justice Robert Brutinel noted in the order that Fontes, as the county recorder, “acted unlawfully by including the ‘New Instruction’ with mail-in ballots” because the only legal instructions for addressing ballot errors are based in state law and Arizona’s Election Procedures Manual.
Fontes’ Republican opponent also recently learned the hard way that sometimes the best thing to do is stay mum and allow a bad news cycle to run its course.
Instead, Rep. Mark Finchem chose to respond to an announcement that several Republicans publicly endorsed Fontes.
Finchem’s two tweets on the subject led to even more public attention of the endorsements -and the reasons for them- than if he had ignored the subject.
“Republicans who endorse Adrian Fontes are not Republican, they are Marxists pretending to be Republicans, deceiving voters,” Finchem tweeted.
Friends don't let friends vote for Adrian Fontes.
— Mark Finchem (@RealMarkFinchem) September 13, 2022