Mercer Campaign Derailed by GOP

Gabreila Saucedo Mercer's campaign may have been abandoned by the GOP, but she won't let that tiny detail stop her bid to be a member of Congress.

Funding for her campaign has been pulled, she was rudely dumped by AZ Governor Jan Brewer recently when the well know Republican cancelled a fundraiser appearance earlier this month following Mercer's incendiary racial comments, and after a string of caustic statements both on her Facebook page and at public appearances. It seems her brand of ultra right wing "conservativism" is not as popular as once believed.

The district is less than 25 percent Republican, so even with GOP assistance she has a lot of convincing to do, since at least a third of the district is independent. Barney Brenner, a member of the Pima County GOP executive committee told The Arizona Daily Star it will be harder for a Republican to win when national money is directed elsewhere, but "we have a very good candidate and if anybody can do it, Gabriela Saucedo Mercer can,"

 A recent Mercer Facebook post, littered with the usual hateful Tea Party comments about the opponent's looks, or his overweight appearance rather than anything of any real substantive or constructive value, suggests that she is going forward with a candidate forum and debating her opponent, Raul Grijalva. With the GOP pullout I wonder if Grijalva will even bother to show.


The Star went on to report that Mercer declined to comment to on the NRCC but said fundraising is "going great" and she is feeling good about the race and preparing for upcoming debates.

Financially, Mercer is way behind Grijalva, who holds about $300,000 in funds. According to the NWRA in a post dated Feb 2 2012, she "raised $95,000 in 2011 including $25,000 in the fourth quarter. Saucedo Mercer reported $4,000 on hand in December." In a document dated Aug 8, AZcentral.com reports in a PDF that Mercer has roughly $15,000 on hand. Information at Opensecrets.org also says she has $15,000 remaining.

But money and demographics aren't the only obstacles for Mercer. Her vitriolic rhetoric is too hot for Governor Brewer and the NRCC to support, but it's a trend that has held since her entry into the race. In a Nogales International story dated Sep 6 2011, just over a year ago, founder and president of the nation’s largest Hispanic Republican group, Somos Republicans, Dee Dee Garcia Blase said Mercer is “not a real Republican" and went on to say that “Real Republicans have their capitalism hats on ... She’s got a restrictionist Dixiecrat mentality and we cannot afford that in Arizona. People like that destroy our image. As the party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, we cannot grow that way. Those policies are a turn-off to Hispanic Republicans.”

Mercer's campaign has been bumpy at best. Rumours early on suggested the GOP wasn't happy with her and her and actually toyed with retrieving Ruth McClung back into the action because Mercer "might be prone to the more bat guano side in some of her statements." She's gone on to have a string of them.