Arizona’s governor offers tainted take on tainted money

All of a sudden, Gov. Doug “We Got Him” Ducey has decided that it’s best not to pass judgment on a criminal suspect before he’s had his day in court. It didn’t used to be that way. Ducey certainly wasn’t so fairminded a while back, when authorities made an arrest in the case of a string of shootings on Interstate 10. Remember how that went? When 21-year-old Leslie Allen Merritt, Jr. was arrested in connection with shootings on Interstate 10, Ducey tweeted, “We got him!”

Seven months later, Merritt was released from jail and slapped Ducey, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, the state and the county with a big, fat lawsuit.

Trashing Merritt appeared to be a good political move. And it probably was, until he got released. Circumstances change.

Most recently, four local political insiders were indicted for charges that included bribery with the intent to influence the Arizona Corporation Commission.

Those in trouble include Ducey’s pal and lobbyist Jim Norton, Pinal County developer George Johnson, former Corporation Commissioner Gary Pierce and his wife, Sherry.

It’s a pretty big high-profile case, but this time the governor is taking a wait-and-see attitude.

Of course, that newfound sense of impartiality might — just might — have something to do with the fact that the suspects, including Ducey’s dear old friend, funneled roughly $14,000 into Ducey’s campaign war chest.

A number of the other politicians who have received contributions from one or another of the indicted individuals have rushed to divest themselves of the now-tainted cash.

It’s what politicians do, for the most part.

Not long ago, Ducey’s Republican Party condemned Democrat Kyrsten Sinema and others for having accepted contributions from embattled former owners of the New Times over their association with Backpage.com, for which they face criminal charges in California and lawsuits by human-trafficking victims.

Republican officials even solicited party members to troll a Sinema event, writing in an email, “It would be absolutely wonderful if we had as many of her Republican constituents as possible attend this event to ask her why she accepted thousands of dollars from the creator of Backpage.com. I’m sure most of you have been keeping up with the news on this. It’s pretty bad, and we’re trying to hold her accountable for it.” Sinema, yes. But not Ducey. The governor is holding on to the money, tainted or not.

And the party is backing him. Ducey’s campaign adviser, J.P. Twist, said, “We’ll see where the chips fall as it relates to the court case. We’ll make a determination later on.”

That’s the kind of even-handed neutrality you’d expect from a politician, I suppose, when all those tainted chips fell into his war chest.