Cook sends notes, yet it’s lobbyist who is suspended

Just two weeks into the legislative session and already a sex scandal has popped into public view at the state Capitol. That’s got to be a record as our leaders’ extracurricular activities usually stay out of the public eye.

This time, however, there are love letters and ethical implications that affect the public.

Naturally, Rep. David Cook insists there’s nothing to see here, that he’s not engaged in an affair with a lobbyist whose employer has interests in legislation he sponsors.

“We are friends for years,” Cook, RGlobe, told Arizona Republic reporters Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Andrew Oxford.

Yes, because it’s perfectly normal for a legislator to write letters to a lobbyist referring to her as “my love” and saying that “a higher power brought us together.”

For what? To make the state great again for farmers?

There is so much that is wrong with this story. Let me count the ways.

The fact that Cook, a rancher who is married, expects people to believe that he writes letters like that to someone who is just a friend. That’s either an outright lie or it’s just plain creepy.

The fact that Cook remains on the job now that the letters have come to light while “my love” – lobbyist AnnaMarie Knorr – was immediately suspended once the letters came to light.

The fact that Cook specializes in agricultural issues and Knorr lobbies for several agricultural interests, including the Western Growers Association.

Or how about the fact that Cook has apparently broken no rules of acceptable behavior for our leaders? This, because the Arizona House doesn’t seem to have any rules of acceptable behavior.

If it did, I imagine Cook might have landed in a hot pot in late 2018.

That’s when he handed over his House ID card rather than his driver’s license and famously told a state highway patrol officer “You’ll get yours.” This, after being pulled over for getting drunk and swerving his way along Loop 202, at times with his right wheels on the shoulder of the road.

Cook’s extreme DUI charge was knocked down in court to a regular DUI, with 24 hours in jail. Meanwhile, no questions were asked in the House about whether such behavior was appropriate for a guy who makes laws for the rest of us to follow.

Now comes Cook’s love letters and Knorr’s suspension, first reported this week by the Yellow Sheet Report. The handwritten letters, nearly 100 pages written over a span of several weeks last fall, also were sent anonymously to other reporters, including The Republic’s Sanchez.

“My love,” Cook wrote, “I truly believe that a higher power brought us together at this time in our lives for a

right and just purpose.”

“I deeply love you,” Cook wrote, “and on many occasions I find myself trying to protect me from being hurt by having these deep feelings for you ... The time we have together working, playing, shopping (in the rain) seeing the beauty of our state, traveling have all been a tremendous experience I will never forget.”

Another letter appears to reference Cook’s wife.

“The other morning she woke me up and asked me if I was going to leave her,” Cook wrote. “I did not answer her – I know it is heavy but it is what it is. I am going to bed – I will write to you tomorrow.”

The letters was signed, “Love, David oxox.”

Both Knorr, 39, and Cook, 51, have said they are just old friends — not the sort that come with benefits.

Knorr told The Republic that Cook and his wife wrote letters of encouragement as she dealt with a medical issue. She said her husband and her father, longtime lobbyist Bas Aja, were engaged in a smear job in an effort to keep her from getting a divorce.

“All I can tell you is Mr. Cook and I have never had an inappropriate relationship,” she said.

Curiously, Cook declined a reporter’s offer to review the letters sent to The Republic, citing privacy concerns. “There is nothing except I help people get through their struggle,” he said. “I help all kinds of people.”

One wonders how many of those people he professes to “deeply love.” And how he can be objective on state issues that stand to benefit people he deeply loves.

The Western Growers Association has put Knorr on administrative leave, pending an investigation.

“Western Growers holds itself and its employees to the highest standards of professional conduct,” Dave Puglia, the trade association’s executive vice president, told Yellow Sheet Report.

If only the Arizona House felt the same way.

It goes without saying that the House Ethics Committee should investigate. Until then, Cook should swear off sponsoring bills that benefit farmers.

And here’s an idea: how about the Arizona House at long last set up a code of conduct?

Novel idea that, expecting our leaders to actually adhere to rules the rest of us mere mortals must live by.