Russell Pearce is the chief sponsor of the Arizona bill, and as many have noted, the bill, in effect, legalizes racial profiling. From the Fayetteville Observer [emphasis mine]:
Arizona Immigration Bill Sponsor Russell Pearce Has White Supremacist Ties, Nativist Views
In 2006, Arizona state legislator Russell Pearce got himself into a bit of trouble.
Pearce is the chief sponsor of Arizona's brutal new immigration law.
In '06, he circulated emails from the National Alliance, a white supremacist group. The email defended a racially conscious white person who "looks askance at miscegenation or at the rapidly darkening racial situation in America." (Miscegenation refers to interracial relationships.)
The email went on to blame the media for forcing on the public the notion of equality of the races, the truth of the Holocaust and "the wickedness of attempting to halt the flood of non-White aliens pouring across our borders ... ."
Pearce claimed later to not know what the group was or what was in the email, but the chairman of the state Republican Party called the email a "severe mistake."
Then-U.S. representative J.D. Hayworth, who is no softy himself on illegal immigration, said: "Given the regrettable and disturbing nature of the e-mail Russell Pearce circulated earlier this week, I cannot in good conscience lend my endorsement to his candidacy for State Representative."
If the email "slip" had been Pearce's only tie to racism and nativism, maybe it would be no big deal on the scheme of things. But there's more.
- Pearce, who is now a state senator, has been videotaped and photographed palling around with nativists and white supremacists at anti-immigrant rallies, including with neo-Nazi and white power activist J.T. Ready.
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