About McCain's OpponentYou might want to look into Chris Simcox before
you send money:
But is Simcox the right candidate for conservatives to rally around?
Is he the best conservatives can do in Arizona?
That might depend on what you think of Alan Keyes and the fundraising network that uses his name.
A few years ago, Keyes and his Declaration Alliance took over the fundraising and fund-accounting side of the Minuteman operation.
The money problems are
partially discussed here:
Bill Parmley, former coordinator for Texas, quit after alleging Simcox botched the organization's financing. He also warned that some members of his Goliad, Texas, chapter, which recently was shut down, were "racists" and "wanted to go after Mexicans as a whole," not simply report undocumented immigrants to the U.S. Border Patrol.
Although Simcox denied Parmley's allegations and said the organization is financially sound, his recent pleas for donations hint at money troubles. A Minuteman Civil Defense Corps e-mail sent Friday and signed by Simcox stated that overhead for the October operation has doubled because volunteers started patrolling after Hurricane Katrina to fill in for roughly 240 U.S. Border Patrol agents dispatched to the Gulf Coast.
My buddy Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times has some more
info on Simcox:
The minuteman honcho's ex-wives have also called into question Simcox's character. According to a 2005 article in the Southern Poverty Law Center's magazine Intelligence Report, Simcox's first ex-wife accused him of trying to sexually molest their 14-year-old daughter. His second ex-wife, accused Simcox in court of having a mental breakdown and of sometimes violent, erratic behavior.
"He once took a knife from the kitchen and threatened to kill himself," the second ex-wife, Kim Dunbar testified in court, according to IR. "When he was angry, he broke furniture, car windows, he banged his head against the wall repeatedly and punched things."
And the money thing comes up again:
Critics in and out of his movement have assailed MCDC's promises to build "Israeli-style" border fences on private land near the border. In 2007, Fountain Hills resident James Campbell sued MCDC in an attempt to get back $100,000 he had donated for the construction of just such a fence. Campbell, who had mortgaged his property to raise the $100K, accused Simcox and MCDC of diverting the money for other uses. According to a report last year in The Sierra Vista Herald, Campbell said that he "allowed the civil case to be dismissed because he did not want to continue to fund the litigation."
I am not entirely opposed to conservatives running opposition candidate against Republicans they feel are insufficiently right wing. Pat Toomey, for example, is a solid conservative and would do a great job with Arlen Specter's seat. But Simcox is not the answer for Arizona.
