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 Neither John Kaites Nor Tom McGovern Deserves The Attorney General's Job. By Jeff Smith TWENTY-TWO YEARS ago I did something out of keeping with my upbringing, with the values my mother and father instilled in me, with the course I had consciously mapped for my own life and work, and it stuns me even today to recall this episode and realize that it was my life, and not some skeleton from some other man's closet. Most of the people who have come to know me since then do not suspect this secret facet of my history and are shocked if they learn of it.
I regard this as a mixed blessing. Full disclosure is a swell thing when it comes from the primary source. In other words, an honest man is a virtuous man: A snitch is basically a chickenshit with a dishonest agenda. Take John Kaites, for instance. Please. Kaites was the candidate in the Republican Party primary for state attorney general who got crushed by Tom McGovern. Kaites and McGovern were both sorry-ass primary candidates. McGovern will now face Democrat Janet Napolitano in November. Since the job is the top law-enforcement position in state government, it would be nice to have an honest man or woman win the election. For this reason I have to say that nobody in his right mind should have even considerd voting for a no-dick little weasel like John Kaites. How come? On account of Kaites ran these wretched TV ads showing McGovern behind prison bars, bearded, looking dangerous. TV production labs can do wonderful things with special effects. The voice-over says McGovern "has a record, not as a prosecutor, but as a criminal." Wow. And what is this criminal record our would-be successor to Arizona's top law-dog alleged against his rival? Well, 15 years ago McGovern was charged with possession of a weapon and with drug possession. The circumstances were these: Police were investigating a bar fight in which McGovern was not, repeat, not, involved. They searched the car he was driving and found a pellet gun in the trunk. A pellet gun. And in the ashtray of the car, which belonged to McGovern's brother, they found residue--residue--of marijuana. Big whoop. All the charges were dropped. Okay, let's just trot through the kindergarten course in common-law, shall we? Under our system of justice a person is innocent until proven guilty. An arrest during an investigation is routine police busy-work and does not make a man a criminal. Pellet guns are for plinking at paper targets. A roach in someone else's ashtray isn't worthy of consideration. So what do you make of a man who would be state attorney general, who dredges up a whole lot of nothing from another man's past, and runs these cartoons on television--based on all this fabrication--calling that man a criminal? You have no option but to conclude that this man--John Kaites is his name--is utterly dishonest and without a shred of decency or integrity. A worm. A gutless little weenie. Oh, and he was forced to admit that he once smoked marijuana. Said he only tried it once, back when he was a school kid, and didn't like it and never tried it again. Where have we heard that lame old shit before? Now the circumstances of Kaites admission of actual felonious behavior are in themselves shameful and reflect unflatteringly on the unjustly accused Mr. McGovern. Irate over the incoming mud, McGovern prepared an affadavit in which he claims never to have smoked marijuana in his whole life. Outgoing Attorney General Grant Woods, who supports McGovern's candidacy, signed the affadavit, even while saying the marijuana issue is irrelevant. Woods would have been wiser then to have declined to participate in this unseemly exchange of public relations stunts. Nevertheless, McGovern stood by while Kaites made his lame claim that McGovern is a criminal--just not a convicted criminal. Then McGovern challenged Kaites to declare his own innocence of experience with the dreaded reefer...which Kaites ultimately was unable to do. So by all legal, technical and practical standards it is the admitted dope-smoker Kaites who is the criminal, not the arrested-but-unprosecuted pellet gun possessor McGovern. All of this involves matters of no real moment, certainly not up-to-the-moment. Judging by their current standards of conduct I'd say McGovern is better outfitted by nature to be a TV evangelist somewhere in Glendale or Buckeye, and Kaites ought to flogged in public for being a lying prick. Neither one of them deserve anybody's vote for attorney general. Oh, and by the way...that dark episode from my past? In 1976, during a lull in my career as a nattering nabob of negativism, I was seduced into running as a candidate for political office. Not unlike the two spoiled brats contesting for the Republican nomination for state attorney general, except that my opponent and I treated one another with greater respect. Aside from the fistfight in the parking lot of his campaign headquarters one afternoon and his employment of Emil Franzi to steal the election from me, my contest with Bud Walker for the Pima County Board of Supervisors was the very model of civilized civics.
I admit these trespasses only to demonstrate that we can find
redemption and grow beyond the sins of youth. Fortunately for
me, and for the taxpayers of Pima County, I didn't inhale.
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© 1995-97 Tucson Weekly . Info Booth |
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But such is the climate of contemporary public life that many
of us are forced to confront and concede aspects of our past and
our character that, by their contrast to our general character,
confuse and embarass us. Nobody's perfect; indeed, most of us
are imperfect to an Olympian extent, and if we venture into the
arena of public life--be it service to the commonweal or self-service
in pursuit of power or greed--we can expect to get hung out to
dry with our own dirty laundry.
