Politico reports on a peculiar dust-up involving Congressman Raul Grijalva, Nogales Mayor Arturo Garino and Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, who hopes to challenge Grijalva in 2012:
A southern Arizona border mayor is denying he ever said his residents wanted to “lynch” Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva for supporting a boycott of the state — a charge made by Republican House candidate Gabriela Saucedo Mercer.
In an interview with POLITICO, Mercer said one of the reasons she can defeat Grijalva in the 7th Congressional District next year is because the mayor of Nogales told her “people down there want to lynch him.”
“That is what the mayor says, people down there, they want to lynch him,” she said. “He doesn’t show up in Nogales because people want to lynch him.”
But Nogales Mayor Arturo Garino, a Democrat, said he never uttered those words and doesn’t know why Mercer would say he did.
“She’s talking about lynching the congressman? No, I would never say that,” Garino said when reached by phone. “She visited my office. But never did we discuss anything like that.”
[Politico]
This article appears in May 12-18, 2011.
Tea Party types latched onto this strange woman last year after she publicly scolded the Tucson City Council last year for its resolution against SB 1070. A video of her, crowing sentimentally about how she’s a “legal immigrant” began making the rounds on YouTube. And now she’s a Republican congressional hopeful.
There may be more to this lady than meets the eye. It will be interesting to learn more about her immigration story and about the things she’s been doing in the intervening years here in Tucson. Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt, assume she has nothing to hide, and learn all about who she really is.