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Sweeney's primary win leaves Republicans cold

Pima County Republican officials are distancing themselves from their party's nominee for Congress in District 7, perennial candidate Joe Sweeney. "I think Joe Sweeney is a candidate that the Republican Party, as an organization, needs to analyze carefully to determine whether they can support him," County Republican Chairman John Munger said after Sweeney got 70 percent of the vote against Lou Muñoz in Tuesday's primary. "There's a reasonable chance the Pima County Republican Party will be unwilling to support him, will disavow his candidacy," Munger said, while declining to go into detail until he meets with the county executive committee. Ed Parker, a member of that executive committee and former executive director of the county party, said the result of that meeting should be putting as much distance as possible between the party and Sweeney. But Republican voters felt otherwise, picking Sweeney to take on Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva in the Nov. 2 election. Sweeney's rigid anti-immigration and anti-homosexuality stands alienated party officials. They also note that he's run for Congress 11 times over the last 20 years as a Democrat, a Republican, a Democrat, a New Alliance Party member and then Republican again. Although he won the GOP nomination to take on legendary Democratic Congressman Mo Udall in 1988 and 1990, he was never a part of the party mainstream and drew no financial or other support from the party. He further angered the Republican hierarchy with a series of challenges to incumbent Rep. Jim Kolbe, including a 1996 campaign that featured some stinging attacks on Kolbe's homosexuality. Sweeney blames GOP leaders

Sweeney said he believes Republican leaders are bashing him because they don't want to admit they've fumbled the issue of immigration, both legal and illegal, which has been almost the exclusive focus of his campaign this year. During campaign speeches and interviews, he has regularly blamed a litany of problems - crime, health care, unemployment, voter fraud - on illegal immigration, and called for reforms and reductions in legal immigration. In his campaign two years ago he referred to illegal immigrants coming across the border "like hyenas." Sweeney said he won the nomination because "I'm trying to represent citizen taxpayers. I'm not for illegal immigration. I'm not for the gays and all this perverted liberalism." Even aliens who enter the country legally too frequently abuse the American welcome mat, he said, trying to change their status from visitor to permanent resident alien, "sucking up our services." Parker, the party's former executive director, has heard enough. "You can compare it to David Duke. That's how I feel about Joe Sweeney. He's Arizona's David Duke," Parker said. Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the KKK who ran a highly publicized, and unsuccessful, campaigns for governor and both houses of Congress in Louisiana. Parker said Sweeney campaigning as a Republican will be "very bad for the party. He's not the standard bearer for the Arizona Republican Party I know." Even if Sweeney were to win, Parker said he doesn't understand any issue, including immigration, well enough to represent the state in Congress. That's why Parker said he will endorse Grijalva - even though he disagrees with Grijalva on nearly every issue. Sweeney rejected the notion he's a racist. "Why do we have to have our taxes go to someone like Grijalva, who wants to give it to Hispanic socialists?" he said. He said he's not concerned by the threat Republican leaders will disavow his campaign because he's making his case to average voters. "Who are they to banish people from the party?" he said. State Sen. Toni Hellon, Kolbe's campaign manager, described Sweeney as "not a nominee our campaign is proud of," and said there will be no coordination between the two congressional campaigns. She said she also doubts Republican contributors will put a lot of money into Sweeney's effort. The National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee will probably contact Kolbe before putting money into Sweeney's campaign, she said. But she said she believes Republican financiers already know something about Sweeney. "He's been to D.C. a number of times, and I expect people back there know who he is," she said. Munger agreed, saying, "I doubt there will be significant funding out there for him," even from groups that oppose Grijalva, because of the minimal likelihood for success and concerns about Sweeney. State Party Chairman Bob Fannin said he knows little about Sweeney because the District 7 congressional race is not one the party highlighted as worthy of putting a lot of resources into, given the more than 2-1 Democratic voter registration advantage. But when the results were announced, Fannin said he started getting complaints about Sweeney, as well as requests from Sweeney supporters to meet with the nominee. In light of the complaints, Fannin said the state party will also scrutinize Sweeney closely before deciding whether to support him. With so much of the party leadership against him, Hellon said "we were in shock" when election tote boards showed Sweeney getting 70 percent of the vote. Party leaders attributed the outcome mostly to Sweeney's higher name recognition in what was, for the most part, a low-key campaign. "He's run so many times he has name recognition against someone who's never run before," Parker said. "People sometimes vote for people they don't know much about," Munger added. Hellon agreed but said the immigrant issue can't be overlooked in his win over Muñoz. "Sweeney has a last name that some voters are more comfortable with," she said. Grijalva puts it in even stronger terms, calling Sweeney "fundamentally, a racist. Some of the stuff he was expounding, if it wasn't overtly racist, it was on the borderline." Grijalva said since Sweeney ran a single-issue campaign, that must have been what attracted Republican voters to vote for him. "He played on fears. His only platform was an anti-immigrant platform and the majority of the Republican caucus must have liked it since they voted for him," he said. "To some extent, he defines a segment of the Republican Party." He said noted Republican Randy Graf's success against Kolbe supports that theory. Graf, who also focused heavily on illegal immigration and border security, gave Kolbe his closest primary contest in more than a decade, picking up 43 percent of the vote. Grijalva limits debates

Grijalva said his first reaction to Sweeney's victory was to announce there would be no debates or joint forums. "I didn't want to give him a forum for his anti-immigrant and border security rants," Grijalva said. He said he relented and will participate in debates staged by nonpartisan groups such as the League of Women Voters or the news media because "whether I like it or not, the Republican Party elected him as their standard bearer." Immigration reform has been a recurring theme of Sweeney's campaigns dating back to at least 1986. His other issues have included opposition to abortion, criticism that Udall was too old and sick to serve, the creation of a national service system to help the poor and free showers for the homeless. In 1996 he was cited by city police for putting up posters on utility poles and other public property claiming Kolbe had AIDS and had raped a boy. The charges were later dismissed. Kolbe denied the accusations and called them "hatemongering."