An Open Letter To Jan Brewer, Arizona Secretary of State

This is a letter I just sent to Jan Brewer:

Dear Ms. Brewer,

I am writing to express my dismay that you are using public taxpayer funds to generate publicity for your own election campaign.

Saturday, September 30th, I received in the mail the 240-page Publicity Pamphlet for Ballot Propositions & Judicial Performance Review, prepared and issued by you in your job as Arizona Secretary of State. Paging through it, I realized that you had inserted your name on 236 of those 240 pages.

The only 4 pages that did NOT include your name were pages 233-236, the detachable pages that a voter can mark and take into the polling place as a memory guide. Under campaign law, as I recall, it is illegal to take campaign material into a polling place. Clearly, that is why your name was left off of those particular pages.

That omission also makes clear that the insertion of your name onto EACH AND EVERY remaining page of the pamphlet, 236 pages, WAS intended as campaign material, as a way of presenting your name before every registered voter in Arizona, over and over and over, TWO HUNDRED THIRTY-SIX times.

And it cost you, and your campaign, not one penny. Because it was all paid for by my taxes,and my neighbor's taxes, and the taxes of every other Arizona residence and business.

I feel like you have picked my pocket, while simultaneously slapping me across the face. Slapping me across the face two hundred thirty-six times.

This obvious and contemptful violation of ethics and the public trust cost you not a penny, but it has lost you any chance for my vote. And I will express my feelings to my family, and friends, and co-workers, as well.

I will also send copies of this letter to the Arizona Republic and the New Times. And I will reproduce it on my own weblog (http://undulantfever.blogspot.com/) as well.

Best of luck on your upcoming job search.

Sincerely,

Bruce Arthurs