The LookoutImmigrant advocates want to recall Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer
The group that helped oust Russell Pearce, the powerful anti-immigrant Arizona politician, earlier this month is now setting its sights on Jan Brewer, the state's Republican governor, and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Randy Parraz, one of the co-founders of Citizens for a Better Arizona, told Yahoo News that the group using its website to recruit volunteers who are interested in recalling Brewer. If enough volunteers sign up, the group will start its drive to collect the nearly 450,000 signatures needed to get Brewer's name on the ballot before her term is up in 2014.
A recent poll from Public Policy Polling suggests this effort may face an uphill battle. Only 32 percent of voters said they would support a recall of Brewer, even though 49 percent of voters disapprove of her.
Arpaio, the self-proclaimed toughest sheriff in America who has been criticized for his "tent city" prisons and chain gains, is up for reelection next year. Parraz says his group is mobilizing to knock on doors in Maricopa County to ask voters not to elect him again. The sheriff has held his office since 1992, and he tells the Arizona Republic that he's not afraid of the campaign. "I've raised $6 million," he told the paper. "I'll probably go out and raise another $6 million."
"By the time we're done with him he won't be able to be elected," Parraz says.
Immigration advocates say Pearce lost his seat over his anti-illegal immigration bills (including one that would have rescinded citizenship to U.S.-born children), but most of the Pearce attack ads during the campaign focused on allegations of corruption against the senator, ignoring the immigration issue entirely. That calls into question whether Arizona voters are motivated to oust Brewer or Arpaio for their immigration views alone.
Brewer signed SB1070--which requires local police to ask about immigration status during stops--into law last year. She raised nearly $4 million to defend the law from the federal government's suit that says it violates the Constitution.
Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and the author of boilerplate anti-illegal immigration bills including SB1070, told Wichita's KSN that he doesn't think Pearce's loss will discourage lawmakers in other states from pursuing anti-illegal immigrant bills in the coming year.
"Bottom line is I don't think you'll see legislators in other states saying 'Oh No!' Look what happened to Russell Pearce," Kobach told the station.
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