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Bully meets Nice Guy – Pearce / Lewis Recall Election
RUSSELL PEARCE is a tough-talking Mormon Republican from Mesa, Arizona, a bedroom community near Phoenix that was settled by Mormons and is a conservative stronghold. He likes to wear bulging belt buckles and American-flag shirts. He was a deputy of the notoriously forceful county sheriff, Joe Arpaio, before entering politics and, with his gun-loving and government-hating conservatism, rising to become president of the state Senate. Last year he became famous as the author of SB1070, Arizona’s harsh law against illegal immigrants, whom he blames for most things. Sometimes called a “shadow governor”, he has become a sort of brand statement for Arizona politics.
For many of Mesa’s conservative Mormons, not to mention the rest of the population, all this started seeming excessive. So, earlier this year, Mesans invoked a rarely used Arizonan privilege and petitioned to recall Mr Pearce. Mobilised by Randy Parraz, a Latino activist, volunteers stood on Mesa’s sun-scorched streets and collected signatures. Mr Pearce called them anarchists, and worse. The volunteers called Mr Pearce a sociopath, and worse. The petition succeeded, and Mr Pearce became the first Arizona state legislator ever to be recalled.
This means that he now has to stand in a special election on November 8th to keep his seat. The big question was who in this tight-knit community would dare to run against him. In July Jerry Lewis, an accountant who now manages a chain of charter schools, began publicly contemplating a run. (Arizona also has a politician called Dean Martin, but that is coincidence.) Mr Lewis had never sought public office and had not even signed the recall petition. But he felt that Mr Pearce gave his district an undeserved reputation for meanness.
One morning in July Mr Lewis and his brother-in-law were on a 14-mile jog (Mr Lewis likes to run marathons) when a pick-up truck passed them and a man hurled a padlock into Mr Lewis’s groin. The police investigated, but could prove nothing. “This is third-world,” Mr Lewis remembers thinking. He saw the event as a calling and declared his candidacy.
It has become a bizarre contest. Like Mr Pearce, Mr Lewis is a Mormon and a conservative Republican. “This is a Mormon family feud,” says Dave Richins, a Mesa councilman (and also Mormon and Republican, like most local leaders). What makes it odd is that “I don’t disagree with Pearce on much,” Mr Lewis insists. They both want small government and low taxes, and the rest of it. With so much agreement, a debate between the two candidates was unbearably boring.
If politics really is about “issues”, the differences come down to tiny nuances on education funding (Mr Lewis, a former teacher, values schools more than Mr Pearce, which Mr Pearce naturally denies.) Immigration, perhaps surprisingly, is a subject that Mr Lewis prefers not even to mention. Yes, he would have opposed SB1070, but for the parts of it that are excessive, not because it is wrong in principle.
Mesa’s Mormon elders become very discreet when explaining what is really going on. With two Mormons running for president of the United States, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, much distrusted by mainstream Christians, is currently taking great pains to prove that it stays out of politics. But its theology values families (and thus frowns on the separation, through deportation or incarceration, of illegal family members). Its image is inclusive and global. Mr Pearce and SB1070 have “damaged missionary work” in Latin America, says one Mormon.
So tone and style have become substance in this race, as arguably in national politics. And what a contrast emerges there. Next to Mr Pearce’s aggression, Mr Lewis embodies niceness and politeness. Aged 55 and fit, he seems to have stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting. He used to be a Boy Scout leader and a missionary in Hong Kong (he proudly vocalises the eight tones of Cantonese), as well as a baseball coach. His manner of speaking is strange because he is always smiling. His seventh grandchild is due next month, there are Halloween pumpkins all over his modest house, and he displays endless patience in explaining the stark Mormon iconography of the paintings on his walls.
This, then, is Mr Lewis’s message: he is for civility, good listening and compromise. Mr Pearce’s proxies, by contrast, have sent other signals. After the padlock incident, a fake Twitter account was online for a while, in which Mr Lewis appeared as some sort of pervert. Most brazenly, a third candidate entered the race. Also Mormon but an immigrant from Mexico, Olivia Cortes ostensibly ran against Mr Pearce. But it became clear that she had been placed on the ballot by Mr Pearce’s supporters, including his nieces and a local tea-party boss. A judge ruled that “Pearce supporters recruited Cortes, a political neophyte, to run in the recall election to siphon Hispanic votes from Lewis to advance Pearce’s recall election bid.” Ms Cortes withdrew, but her name remains on the ballots, which may confuse some voters.
And so Mesans will choose between Mr Lewis, an avuncular amateur with mostly local donors, and Mr Pearce, a sauntering state bigwig with far-flung donors and national fame. It appears to be a tight race. Mr Pearce still commands strong personal loyalties in a small place where most leaders and many voters meet at the local Mormon temple, Arizona’s oldest and biggest. But Mr Lewis, with hardly a proper campaign, has a good chance. Mr Lewis is “a way of getting Pearce’s policies without the asshole”, as one Mormon Republican says. He adds that, in some ways, Mesa is a microcosm of present-day America.
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