Adrian Fontes--This Coming Saturday!
First:
I will be out of cell and wifi range the rest of this week. Back on Monday August 21. What follows was first posted August 4. In case you missed it or you are still planning out this coming weekend and had forgotten, here it is again. Reserve you place and bring a friend!
Adrian Fontes
The Spokane County Democrats are hosting Adrian Fontes, the Secretary of State for the State of Arizona, the weekend of August 19 and 20. In the evening of August 19 Mr. Fontes will speak (see below) at the auditorium at Ferris High School on the South Hill at 3020 E 37th Ave. (Doors open at 5P, program starts at 6P.) This event requires pre-registration, see invitation below.
Check out Fontes bio in wikipedia. Fontes, at age 46, dislodged the seven term Republican Maricopa County Arizona Recorder Helen Purcell in the same election in 2016 in which Trump was elected. (In AZ the County Recorder oversees elections—like the County Auditor does in Washington State.) Purcell had shrunk the number of polling places in Maricopa County (which includes Phoenix) from 200 to just 60 before the presidential primary earlier that year. (The population of Maricopa County, at around 4.4 million, is 62% of the population of the entire State of Arizona.) The shrinkage vastly increased wait times, angered voters, and raised accusations of voter suppression, especially suppression of the Latino vote.
As Maricopa County Recorder near the end of his four year term, Mr. Fontes oversaw the ballot counting in the tumultuous 2020 election, an election in which Mr. Fontes himself narrowly lost his seat as Recorder to a Republican challenger. After leaving office Fontes was a vocal critic of the infamous, Trump-induced 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit.
In July of the same year, 2021, Mr. Fontes announced his candidacy for the 2022 Arizona Secretary of State (SOS) election. In the fall of 2022 he won by a tidy margin of 4.8% over far right Republican Mark Finchem, an Oath Keeper ally of Cliven Bundy and our now disgraced but still very active former WA State Representative Matt Shea (“The Biblical Basis for War”).
Adrian Fontes’ family has been resident on land that is now southern Arizona for more than 300 years. He has an undergraduate degree from Arizona State University and a law degree from the Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver.
Sign up (below is the link) to hear Adrian Fontes recount his experience in the tumultuous 2020 election cycle in Maricopa County and lessons learned from his subsequent Arizona statewide electoral victory (in a voting demographic with many similarities to eastern Washington).
The Invitation:
Defending Democracy with Adrian Fontes
Please join the Spokane County Democrats in welcoming Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes August 19 at the Ferris High School Auditorium.
In 2022 Secretary Fontes defeated a MAGA-movement election denier who would have overturned the wishes of Arizona’s voters in the 2020 presidential election. Having served as a U.S. Marine, a prosecuting attorney, and county official, Secretary Fontes pulled together voters across the political spectrum.
Gonzaga University School of Law Professor Jeffrey Omari will share a pre-publication research preview in a speech we’re calling, “Political Disinformation and the End of the World as We Know It.”
Ballet Folklorico de Spokane will open the program, and simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish will be available.
All supporters of democracy are welcome, regardless of party affiliation.
Doors Open at 5:00PM
Event Starts at 6:00PM
To register and donate click here.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry