If you are someone who has supported District 4 county supervisor Clint Hickman in the past, here is what you supported, even if your name is Congresswoman Debbie Lesko. Also, if you are one of those people that believes Hickman is such a terrible politician, that he is corrupt and belongs in jail, etc. you should also have issues with the Congresswoman due to the fact that her support for him is most likely one of the top reasons that he has been in power for the past decade. I keep getting asked what my problem is with the Congresswoman. I get it, she’s the ‘sweetheart’ of Maricopa County, but there has to be some people that will stand up and say that everything that glitters is not gold (shoutout to Dan Seals). Before I start, let me say that I will never bring up the past or present PERSONAL lives of candidates, only their policies. That’s not how I operate. They want to do that to me, that’s fine, good luck in finding anything about my past to use against me.
1. I committed to this race on November 4, 2020 because Clint Hickman was the chairman of the MCBOS who oversaw the 2020 elections here and I believe he/they did their part to make sure President Trump didn’t win the county and possibly the state. Congresswoman Lesko has always supported Hickman and Vice versa.
2. According to OpenSecrets, Lesko has brought in more than $4.8M in donations to her campaigns since 2017, with 75% of that amount coming from PACs and Large contributors. She has put in a whopping $1,704 of her own money in any of her races, that’s less than .09%. I ask myself who may she owe favors to in the future, hopefully nobody. If I made over $1M in salary over the last 6 years, I could probably afford to put some of my own money into my own campaign. If I wanted a new Ford pickup truck, I don’t expect the dealership to give it to me for free.
3. In her “thank you to Clint Hickman for all of his service to Maricopa County for the past decade, here are some issues that she thanked him for:
– the MCBOS allowed Sheriff Penzone to shutdown the top HIDTA drug interdiction unit in the nation that operated in the southern part of the county as soon as he took office. That unit was comprised of Maricopa County Sheriff deputies. This happened in January 2017, just before the very rapid increase of Fentanyl trafficking in the US. Just think of how many Americans would be alive today if Clint and the MCBOS forced the sheriff to keep that unit in place?
– In the spring of 2021, Clint and the rest of the MCBOS told the AZ state senate that they weren’t going to comply to a subpoena to turn over information regarding the 2020 election. What did they hide and continue to hide?
– As the chairman of the MCBOS in 2023, Hickman prohibited members of the public from bringing in their personal water bottles into the meetings, forcing us to walk out into the lobby and getting water from jugs with miniature cups.
– The U.S. State Department has deemed forced labor and forced child labor as “modern day slavery”. On more than 1 occasion during 2023 when Clint was the Chairman, the MCBOS approved contracts to companies who receive their parts and supplies from areas that are very rich in the forced labor and forced child labor trades. To me, that says the MCBOS supports slavery.
– The MCBOS also sit on the board of directors for the Maricopa County Library District and their 15 branches throughout the county. In these libraries, you will find dozens of books that contain pornographic material. Many times have citizens pressured the MCBOS to do something about this, only for their request to fall on deaf ears.
Years and years of continued support for Clint Hickman is support for these topics if she personally didn’t intervene as a citizen to fight these topics.
Again, I will not attack Congresswoman Lesko personally, only her policies and what she has failed to speak out about in opposition that affects her/our county.
My issues with the Congresswoman isn’t just about her support for Hickman. The people of Maricopa County sent her to Washington DC to be a leader, but has just 2 bills passed since 2018. One of those bills was to get the Surprise Post Office renamed in the honor of fallen Navy SEAL Marc Lee. Don’t get me wrong, as someone who served 11 years in special forces units, including 6 within the Navy SEAL community, I greatly appreciate her dedication in keeping Marc Lee’s legacy alive here in our community.
However, I do have huge issues with 2 major bills that she voted for or voted against. She voted in favor of a Vaccination Database bill that whoever gets vaccinations gets put on this list. That tells me that she doesn’t believe in medical freedom and that she believes that there isn’t any aspect of our personal lives that the government, on any level, shouldn’t interfere in.
Second, she voted against giving military members disability for burn pit toxins that causes cancer and other medical issues. I understand that we normally get much more stuff that we don’t need or want than we do need or want in bills that get passed into law, but every time the government has a chance to take care of our veterans, we need to do so.
This may be the last chance that we, as Maricopa County, have to get this right. We need someone who has not only been engaged politically for decades here, but who also has had to deal with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, sometimes on a daily basis, and definitely on a weekly and monthly basis and who knows the system inside and out. That is why I have decided to stop my campaign for Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in district 4, and support Dr. Bob Branch for this very important seat at the table of the 4th largest county in America. Trust me, the people of Delaware kept electing a U.S. Senator for more than 30 years, based on name recognition alone, and now look at the clown ruining our country.
While Congresswoman Lesko may be the ‘darling sweetheart’ in these parts, I don’t trust her to be the leader that Maricopa County so desperately needs at this point in our history. By here always supporting Clint Hickman, that tells me she will keep with the status quo, and that is definitely not what we want if we are to survive as a county.