But That Doesn't Mean They Should Get Leadership Roles In The Democratic Party
If you’ve been following our coverage of the flippable congressional seats this cycle, you probably already know that Conor O'Callaghan is the progressive Democrat in this crowded primary in Arizona’s first congressional district (Maricopa County). He’s the one wit the proven ability to coalition build and replace MAGA Republican David Schweikert. Among the credible candidates, he’s the only lifelong Democrat in the race. And you can contribute to his campaign here.
His main primary opponent is Marlene Woods, a lifelong Republican— and an anti-Choice, anti-LGBTQ activist Republican at that. She was married to Arizona Attorney General Grant Wood and once bragged that she was further right than he was. She donated to and supported SB1070 Governor Jan Brewer, a crackpot extremist. Yesterday, the Arizona Republic published an inside look by Laura Gersony into Woods’ musings on her Republican past, something she has desperately tried to play down, if not hide, until now.
She switched her party affiliation 2018, after campaigning against Obama twice and for Trump once. And now she wants to be in Congress as a Democrat! What a joke! Kyrsten Sinema II. She’s trying to rewrite history now, claiming she was always pro-Choice and pro-democracy, bald-faced lies. Gersony noted that “the GOP’s positions on many of those topics, well before the rise of Trump, contrast with the values that Galán-Woods espouses in her congressional campaign. During the time that Galán-Woods was a registered Republican, the party mobilized its voters around repealing the landmark abortion rights case Roe vs. Wade. The party roundly opposed action to mitigate climate change, stoking doubt in the scientific consensus that human activity was causing the planet to warm. And it backed Senate Bill 1070, Arizona’s controversial immigration-enforcement law. In an interview, she declined opportunities to discuss specific policy positions or views that made her align with Republicans in the past. Instead, she said that her family background pushed her toward the Republican Party, that politics was often not top-of-mind for her as a busy mom, and she cast her vote based on individual candidates rather than party affiliation.” Uh huh… individual candidates in Republican primaries.
She claims her family became Republicans when they fled from Cuba because… well, back then, in the ’60s and ‘70s, almost all the Cuban refugees preferred Batista’s fascist dictatorship to Castro’s promise of socialism and they chose the GOP.
She’s still trying to worm out of her past support for teh GOP, their candidates and their toxic agenda. She told Gersony that she wasn’t paying any attention to politics are those years and that she “disagreed with many of the party’s policy positions at the time.’There was a time where there was room for a pro-choice Republican. Those days are gone,’ she said.” Yeah, but they were gone well before 2018 and they were certainly gone when she was supporting anti-Choice Republicans candidates like Mitt Romney and the candidate her husband was campaign co-chair for, Jan Brewer. “[S]he says in hindsight she wished she had voted for former President Barack Obama,” although she voted against him twice, in 2008 and 2012. She tries to make her saga sound like she was an anti-Choice Republican— she wasn’t— and it was Trump’s rise that made her switch. “The Republican Party has been driven off a cliff by Donald Trump and people like David Schweikert. It is unrecognizable from the party that my parents aligned with in the '60s.”
Actual Democrats must be laughing at her attempts to avoid just admitting she was wrong. Gersony wrote that “Kurt Kroemer, another candidate in the primary, argued on the debate stage that Galán-Woods was overselling just how much the GOP has changed. ‘The Republican Party has never been for comprehensive immigration reform. The Republican Party has never been for a woman’s right to choose. The Republican Party has never wanted to protect Social Security, Medicare,’ Kroemer said. ‘They’ve always, for decades, tried to eviscerate it. The Republican Party has always tried to minimize the ability of people to vote. That hasn’t changed for decades.’”
Were Woods to manage to get into Congress, she certainly wouldn’t be a member aligning with progressives. She calls herself "a moderate Democrat," shorthand for conservaDem, like Sinema was before she switched parties. When Gersony asked her about taxing the rich and corporations, she wormed her way out of giving a direct truthful answer. “[S]he is undecided on the question of raising taxes on wealthy individuals and big corporations beyond that. ‘I am in favor of sunsetting the Trump tax giveaway. Other than that, once I get to Congress, I'll let you know after we figure it all out,’ she said. ‘I think it's shortsighted to think you have all the answers today.’” Democratic primary voters have a right to ask her to sit their primaries out until she does know. No one wants to buy a pig in a poke— and Woods has a history of avoiding the candidate forums; so far she backed out of 7 of the 9!
once again, I parrot and 'splain what YOU have written over the years. And it is so uncomfortable for you... you censor it. Find a mirror. use it.