Steller's Friday Notebook: Local GOP club's ban on journalists speaks to larger sickness in society

We don’t know what Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller said when she went to speak to the weekly luncheon of a local GOP group on Tuesday.

The Pima County Republican Club lets its speakers decide whether individual reporters are permitted into the event. When my colleague Joe Ferguson arrived, he said, he walked up to speak to Miller, but she turned and told the club’s president that she didn’t want him there. The president told Ferguson, and he left.

This has happened before: Miller prevented me from attending her presentation to the club on Oct. 25, 2016. And it got worse after that. I attended several of the club’s luncheons early last year, including a presentation by her fellow GOP Supervisor Steve Christy. Then, around July, the board decided to ban me, and me alone, permanently.

The group is not a taxpayer-funded or government entity, so these are not, strictly speaking, public meetings. They have the right to admit and prohibit who they want. But traditionally these political groups let in reporters and whoever else wants to come.

The most analogous Tucson group to this Republican club is the Democrats of Greater Tucson, which also meets weekly. They don’t allow speakers to prohibit people from attending, and they let the public in, past president Jeremey Lasher told me.

Once, in December, they stopped a Republican tracker from filming Democratic congressional candidate Ann Kirkpatrick, he said, but the tracker was allowed to stay.

The Republican Club’s prohibitions and expulsions speak, I think, to a larger sickness in our society. Lots of people have pointed out the increasing political tribalism of the United States — the two tribes live in their own fact-environments, where they aren’t troubled by outside information that may challenge their preconceived beliefs.

This is how it plays out on the local level. An elected official prohibits a reporter from covering her because, apparently, she doesn’t like how he or his publication have treated her. And an entire party group pushes away another journalist because they don’t like his opinions.

Nobody is accusing either of us of misbehaving at the meetings, which are generally attended by 25 to 50 people. I usually type notes on my computer, sometimes tweeting. I’ve had cordial conversations with attendees, even though they often disagree with me on the issues. But apparently our disagreements are too strong to allow mixing anymore.

I was not invited to the board meeting where I was individually banned, but Harry Carrigan, the club’s treasurer, told me Wednesday that the board’s vote and its sentiment were unanimous.

“It’s your columns. That’s the only reason,” he said. “Your columns have gotten so nasty and so biased that we made that decision.

“We didn’t feel we were getting a fair shake, and we decided not to have you show up. Joe, he attempts to be somewhat fair and not quite as biased as you.”

To be clear, I’m a columnist who is paid to give my opinion along with my reporting. Joe Ferguson is a news reporter who covers City Hall and politics.

Now, I acknowledge that my political columns tend to lean left, more so since Donald Trump became a leading candidate for president and then won. But I plead not guilty to bias, which the Oxford English dictionary defines this way: “Inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair.”

I think I’m fair.

More to the point, though, I think the decision by Miller to ban Star journalists is harmful to the local voting public. She’s an elected official and should be able to handle the attention that position brings, whether it’s praise or criticism.

But this was Miller’s comment on Twitter to Ferguson complaining he was kicked out was: “Boo hoo!! Cry me a river...”

Broadly, it’s sad to see the walling off of our political tribes play out like this locally. It speaks of an unwillingness to have a free exchange of ideas. It also keeps us from getting to know each other as people or even, God forbid, becoming friends despite our disagreements.

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‘Bob Stump’ wars spread

Tucson is far from Congressional District 8, which covers the northwest side of metro Phoenix. But the wars over the name Bob Stump, which erupted there, have spread here.

The former Arizona corporation commissioner named Bob Stump came under criticism this week for using that name as he runs for the GOP nomination in CD8. His full name is Christopher Robert Stump, and he used “Chris Stump” years ago.

Bob Stump is the name of an unrelated former congressman, a Republican from the same area who served 26 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, until 2003, the year he died.

Nancy Stump, the former congressman’s widow, assailed Bob Stump the current candidate in a written statement.

“I want to set the record straight,” she wrote. “There is only one Bob Stump and that was my late husband. Let’s be clear Christopher Robert Stump is not related to my late husband or our family in any way, shape or form. I would ask that he publicly acknowledge that he is not related to our family and stop this charade.”

This was, understandably, an affront to the candidate Bob Stump’s mother, Jane Stump, who lives in the Tucson area. She responded by issuing her own written statement:

“I, too, want to set the record straight. There is not, as Mrs. Stump puts it, ‘only one Bob Stump, and that was my late husband.’ My late husband was also named Bob Stump, as was my husband’s father.”

She went on to say, “My husband called his son Bob from day one.”

Not to be outdone, Bob Stump the candidate pointed out on Twitter Thursday that another Bob Stump recently won a seat on the River Valley school board in Ohio — as a write-in candidate, no less.

Kiss, don’t tell in Mexico

The leading candidate for president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, was in Hermosillo campaigning Wednesday. As you’d expect, he got some questions from local reporters.

His response: He kissed them, twice. The victims were Cristina Gomez Lima of La Jornada and Jael Esparza of Uniradio Noticias.

It caused a good bit of disgust on the part of Sonoran reporters, disgust that is visible in video of the candidate kissing Esparza.

New Dems chair elected

The Arizona Democratic Party selected Felecia Rotellini as its new chair on Sunday.

Rotellini replaces Alexis Tameron, who had served since January 2015. Rotellini was the Democratic candidate for Arizona attorney general in 2010 and 2014, losing to Republicans Tom Horne and Mark Brnovich, respectively.