PHOENIX, Aug. 19 - In a speech on the steps of the State Capitol last evening, Richard Grayson, a state-certified write-in candidate in the Sept. 2 Republican primary for the Fourth Congressional District seat currently held by Democratic Rep. Ed Pastor, decried the poor quality of GOP candidates in the race.
Speaking to random passersby, Grayson told the audience that his on-the-ballot opponent, Don Karg, who was the Republican party's candidate in both 2004 and 2006, is "to put it charitably, an unqualified nutjob."
"Anyone looking at his campaign website, his answers to the Arizona Republic candidate questionnaire, or his ludicrous and rambling MySpace videos will have to conclude that this man is at best unfit for public office and an embarrassment to the Republican party," Grayson said.
Of his own candidacy, Grayson said he was "too liberal to represent the warring Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon wings of the Arizona Republican party."
"The Arizona GOP and the Maricopa County Republican Committee have such contempt for the state's Latino residents that the party refuses to run a credible candidate in the Fourth Congressional District," Grayson said. "They've said over and over again: they do not seem to want Latinos in this party, and many of them apparently don't want Latinos in our state or our country."
"The Republican party's hostility to our hardworking Latino residents also extends to other esteemed groups in our community: Muslims, gay and lesbian Arizonans, and all those who they view as threats to our white-bread-and-mayo state," Grayson told the audience.
"Instead of embracing the wonderful diversity here, they are treating the Republican party as a country club, excluding people whose votes they need to win elections."
Grayson said he had hoped that his tongue-in-cheek campaign, combined with his sincere liberal views supporting immediate withdrawal from Iraq, Medicare for all Americans, new taxes on carbon and gasoline use, comprehensive immigration reform with a fast-track path to citizenship, tightened regulation of corporations and massive increases in federal spending for infrastructure and human capital to fight the current hard economic times - as well as the fact that he's a gay atheist and recent Democrat - would provoke a serious Republican to step forward and run in AZ-04.
"But no one did," he said.
"It's truly sad that those who do favor conservative Republican views don't have a credible candidate to vote for in November in this district," Grayson told voters. "For the third election in a row, the Arizona Republican party has let Don Karg win its nomination to Congress by default."
"Obviously," Grayson concluded, "given the demographics and party registration in Arizona's Fourth Congressional District, any Republican candidate will get pwned by Ed Pastor in November. But for a party which claims to stand up principles it holds dear, the Arizona Republicans are a little low on courage, integrity and responsibility - for a change."
In response to a question, Grayson said he would welcome write-in votes but expected to get "no more than a dozen" on September 2.
"A lot of Republicans don't know how to write," the candidate said.
