Standards for people in office are a bit low

Two of the candidates hoping to become Arizona legislators are suing us, having been tossed out of their previous public offices.

Another is a public menace on our highways.

Still another said such astonishing things about immigration — even the legal kind — that Gov. Doug Ducey and the head of the state Republican Party has called on him to resign.

Then there is Bobby Wilson, a guy who killed his mother — shooting her right in the eye — is accused of threatening the head of his HOA and got kicked out of the Texas state bar after a forgery conviction.

Wilson thinks he’d make a fine state legislator, running for the state Senate in southern Arizona.

Is it possible our standards are set just a tad low?

Don Shooter, having been kicked out of the state House after multiple complaints that he oogled women, made lewd comments about their bodies and jiggled his junk in the face of a young lobbyist, is suing us for his unceremonious sacking, claiming there was a conspiracy afoot. The “Yuma” Republican also is seeking redemption by running for the state Senate.

Meanwhile, Tim Jeffries, having been fired in 2016 after a rocky run as head of the Department of Economic Security, is suing us even as he asks Scottsdale’s Republican voters to send him to the state House. Jeffries has blamed “anti-Catholic” reporters (read:

fine reporter Craig Harris) for publicizing a “manufactured crisis” over his mass firings, his treatment of workers and his cache of weaponry in the DES basement.

Rep. Paul Mosley seems to think he deserves another two years making laws for the rest of us to follow — either that, or he just wants license to continue in his role as a one-man road hazard.

Since taking office in 2017, the Lake Havasu City Republican has been caught speeding six times, with a seventh stop for blowing through a stop sign, and has never gotten a ticket. The story became public in July after the ParkerLive.com posted body-cam video of Mosley claiming legislative immunity after being caught in March doing 97 mph in a 55 mph zone. Reporters then ferreted out six other outrageous traffic stops since he became a legislator.

Rep. David Stringer, R-Prescott, said earlier this summer that immigrants pose an “existential threat” to America. Oh, not all of them, of course. Only the non-European ones, and possibly African Americans who he thinks have a hard time fitting in.

Stringer has ignored calls for his resignation by Ducey and state GOP Chairman Jonathan Lines, chalking up the controversy to “fake news.”

“I am not afraid of conservative big-

wigs and I’m not afraid of liberal bullies either,” he told a reporter last month.

Like Stringer, Wilson smells a political plot and is resorting to the go-to excuse of most every politician who finds himself up to his eyeballs in alligators: Blame the media.

Of this crew, only Mosley and Shooter haven’t made like President Donald Trump and blamed the media for their troubles.

Wilson, meanwhile, takes the prize for sheer audacity.

“I don’t know why you guys are picking on me so much,” Wilson told The Republic’s Dustin Gardiner. “Your paper is trying to destroy my campaign is what you’re trying to do, and you can quote me on that.” Picking on him ...

... By reporting that he killed his mother in 1963 when he was 18 (self-defense, he says) and was suspected of killing his sister (charges were dismissed).

... By reporting that neighbors say he broke down a door and threatened to hurt the president of his homeowners association in Rocky Point in 2016. (Broke down the door, he says, but an “illegal meeting” was going on and he never threatened anybody.)

... By reporting that he resigned from Texas Bar Association and his membership subsequently revoked in 1994 after multiple disciplinary issues and a felony conviction for forgery. (Somebody impersonated him and wrote the resignation letter, he says, and all the disciplinary issues were “pure unadulterated nonsense.”).

When he’s not blaming the media, Wilson apparently is being victimized by his opponents.

He’s sent out letters threatening to sue both his Senate GOP opponent, Shelley Kais, and a Republican candidate for the House, former state Rep. Chris Ackerley.

Neither has a clue what they did to merit being slapped a libel and slander suit, and Wilson has declined to explain how he was victimized.

“That’s going to come out after the election,” he told Gardiner.

When, no doubt, the media will be blamed for the inevitable outcome.