The Race Continues
For Biggest Republican Wing Nut
Republican wing nuts Margaret Taylor Browne, Paul Gosar, Louis Gohmert, Ted Cruz, Madison Cawthorn, Matt Gaetz and, of course, donald trump, look out because Jim Lamon is gaining on you and may very well overtake you all for the inglorious title of “Craziest of the Crazies.”
The latest trump kerfuffle involves the ex-bone spur possibly destroying sensitive government documents by flushing them down the presidential toilet and requiring emergency aid from the presidential plumber with the presidential plunger. Then there was Browne, the esteemed Republican member of Congress from Georgia, who accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of running the “gaspacho police,” an inaccurate referral to the Nazi Gestapo secret police, but cut Browne some slack, she’s just not that smart.
And now we have Lamon, naturally a Republican, who is running to represent Arizona in the U.S Senate, and he has surely scraped the very bottom of the bottom with his latest campaign ad, which is slated to run during the Superbowl on Sunday. In the ad, Lamon shows he’s learned quite a bit from his mentor, donald “Big Lie” Trump as well as fellow Arizona wack job, Paul “I Was Only Kidding When I Put Out The Meme Appearing to Kill Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Attacking President Joe Biden” Gosar.
This is a morality tale about how many people are out there and how many are supportive of people who are really out there.
The ad shows maturity-compromised Lamon, spurs jangling and in a western sheriff’s costume, in a gunfight with a group of federal lawmakers, “the D.C. Gang,” with actors portraying Democrats, including President Joe “Old Joe” Biden, Sen. Mark “Shifty Kelly” Kelly and House Speaker Nancy “Crazyface Pelosi” Pelosi. It hearkens back to those glorious days when trump had a juvenile nickname for anyone he didn’t like. Kelly is running for reelection to the Senate.
Behind Lamon, townspeople shout complaints about “open borders” and fuel prices, while “Big Jim” Lamon taunts the Democrats with, “The good people of Arizona have had enough of you. It’s time for a showdown.”
Lamon pulls his out six shooter and shoots the guns out of the hands of the D.C. Gang, who then turn tail and run, their, Democratic, woke, snowflake tails between their legs.
The ad might be funny if it wasn’t so incredibly juvenile and pandering and if it didn’t so blatantly glorify guns and violence. What surpasses the worst in bad taste is lampooning Kelly, a former astronaut, whose wife, then-Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, was shot and nearly killed in an assassination attempt on Jan. 8, 2011. Six people died in the Tucson shooting. The violence came a year after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and led to Giffords and Kelly founding the nonprofit Americans for Responsible Solutions, which campaigns for gun control measures like universal background checks and red flag laws. And Lamon is joking about shooting Democrats.
If nothing else, Lamon is consistently crass. His previous ad plumbed the depths of immaturity as it focused on “Let’s Go Brandon,” the latest highly sophisticated, popular right wing rallying cry that means “(expletive) Joe Biden.” The chant developed in Alabama after a TV interviewer spoke with NASCAR race driver Brandon Brown last October. In the background, the reporter heard chants in the crowd that she mistakenly heard as “Let’s Go Brandon” when they were actually calling out, “(expletive) Biden.” The rest is history as Trumpworld Republicans far and wide took up the sophisticated battle cry, kind of like “lock her up.”
Lamon was one of 11 Arizona Republicans who signed a document falsely claiming he was authorized to cast the state’s electoral votes for trump. Lamon said he didn’t mean he’d actually sign off on the electoral votes but that it was part of a contingency plan in case the results of the presidential vote were decertified.
Lamon has gathered a list of glittering endorsements.
There’s Ric Grenell, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany, former Acting Director of National Intelligence and former Presidential Envoy for Serbia and Kosovo Negotiations, all under trump. Grenell has been in the thick of the “Stop the Steal” fiasco, claiming that the 2020 election was rigged. Democratic national security leader Susan E. Rice has described Grenell as “one of the most nasty, dishonest people I’ve ever encountered.” Journalist Irwin Arieff, who worked more than 20 years at Reuters, including seven years covering the United Nations, described Grenell as “the most dishonest and deceptive press person I ever worked with.”
“Joe Biden, Mark Kelly and the Democrats in Washington D.C. have severely weakened America’s position in the world,” Grenell said. “We need patriots in the U.S. Senate who will unapologetically put America First.”
Another endorsement came from Thomas Homan, the former, Acting Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Since his retirement in 2018, he has been a contributor to he New York Times and Washington Post. Just kidding, he’s been a mouthpiece for Fox News. Curiously, he lists himself as the “former director,” not the former “acting director.” An innocent omission, I think not.
Mark Morgan, former Acting Commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and former Acting Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, gave the order in 2020 for agents dressed in camouflage and tactical gear to hightail it to Portland, Ore., where they used tear gas and projectile munitions on protestors and shot one peaceful protestor, fracturing his face. Agents also used unmarked vehicles to detain protestors, without identifying themselves as law enforcement.
We now turn to Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., who did what he was told and voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and cited false claims of voter fraud.
“Jim (Lamon) is unwavering in his support for our servicemen and women, and I look forward to working with him to make America a more safe, secure, prosperous place to live for generations to come,” Garcia said.
Ken Bennett, former Arizona Secretary of State and state Senate President, endorsed Lamon and made national news in 2011, when he requested President Barack Obama’s birth certificate from the state of Hawaii as a prerequisite to listing Obama on that year’s presidential ballot. Doesn’t that bring back warm memories of the birther movement that trump so callously exploited.
In 2021, the GOP Arizona state senate provided $150,000 for an audit of the 2020 election presidential results with Bennett named as the liaison between the contractors performing the audit, the state and the county. In late July Bennett was banned from entering the building where the recount process was ongoing, after he shared with experts data that showed the results matched the officially certified numbers in Maricopa County.
“The issue of election integrity and security is vital to a stable functioning government. Jim Lamon is the only candidate who fully supported the independent audit of the 2020 election in Arizona since day one,” Bennett said.
Lamon was endorsed by Steven Schaerer who wrote a book about how Communist China is “the threat of our generation” Schaerer wrote a book about his experiences as a young American entrepreneur in Beijing, where he claimed he “experienced that threat first-hand when they falsely accused, kidnapped, and imprisoned, and tortured me for weeks.” A Google search turned up just one reference to Schaerer in a story by the far right wing news, trump-supporting source, the Epoch Times.
Walter J. Blackman endorsed Lamon and is the only African American elected to the Arizona State Legislature. After a Minnesota police officer murdered George Floyd, triggering nationwide protests against police violence, Blackman posted on Facebook, “I DO NOT support George Floyd and I refuse to see him as a martyr.” Blackman also called the Black Lives Matter movement a “terrorist organization” leading to the Arizona branches of the American Friends Service Committee and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona announcing they would no longer work with Blackman. Following the 2020 United States presidential election, Blackman supported the “Stop the Steal” movement which falsely claimed that Donald Trump won the election nationally and in Arizona.
In March 2021, Blackman announced his candidacy for Arizona’s 2nd congressional district in the 2022 Congressional elections. In a September 2021 speech, Blackman said “The Proud Boys came to one of my events and that was one of the proudest moments of my life.” Asked to comment on his remarks, Blackman condemned the Proud Boys, a far-right group that engages in political violence, saying “At the time of the rally, [I] wasn’t familiar with the totality and breadth of the Proud Boys conduct, which I unequivocally condemn.”
How do you spell slime?
Anthony Kern, a former member of the Arizona House of Representatives, endorsed Lamon. In 2014, Kern was fired from the El Mirage Police Department for lying to a superior about a lost tablet. In late 2020, Kern joined Gohmert and several others in a lawsuit against then-Vice President Mike Pence, seeking to overturn parts of the federal Electoral Count Act and prevent Pence from counting electoral votes for President-Elect Joe Biden. Kern was among 11 Arizona Republicans who, in December 2020, claimed to be “alternate electors” and signed a fraudulent certificate of ascertainment asserting Trump had won the 2020 presidential election.
Kern lost his last election and attended the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C. Kern tweeted, “I will put politics aside if I never win another election. Trump, every time I heard him on TV, it was like he was my friend. Why? Because here’s the President of the United States who was sticking up for little old me.” Kern was seen in photos at the insurrection attempt at the Capitol but was not charged.
Lamon is the latest in a growing list of more than 100 far right candidates this year, including at least a dozen with links to white supremacists, anti-government extremists and the Proud Boys militia movement, according to a February report from the Anti-Defamation League.
The far-right candidates includes sitting legislators like the Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, who has admitted to being a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia with 11 members currently under federal indictment for seditious conspiracy. The Washington “Three Percent” militia claims members in dozens of elected offices throughout the Pacific north-west, thew Anti Defamation League reported.
Nationwide there are 207 current elected officials who aided former president Trump in efforts to overturn the 2020, according to data compiled by the Insurrection Index, a project of the voting rights group Public Wise. The index includes senators like Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, who voted against certifying the 2020 election and spread misinformation including suggesting that the January 6 attack was carried out by “fake Trump voters,” the report said.