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Goldwater touches on immigration in BHC stop


By NEIL YOUNG

Monday, July 3, 2006 10:07 PM PDT



The Daily News

BULLHEAD CITY - It was both a good and bad day for Republican gubernatorial candidate Don Goldwater Friday.

Goldwater, nephew of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, was scheduled to speak at VFW Post 10005's weekly fish fry and ran about an hour late, due to RV problems.

He had borrowed it from a friend and found the vehicle wasn't in very good shape. The RV had at least two tire blowouts and blew out a fuel line between Wickenburg and Kingman.


The good news is, the Goldwater team was able to get everything quickly repaired.

Then, more good news/bad news in Bullhead City. After being introduced by District 3 state Rep. Nancy McLain, who has not yet made a choice between GOP candidates for governor, Goldwater delivered his standard stump speech, focusing mainly on illegal immigration. He declared that Governor Napolitano believes “no illegal aliens should be left behind.”

Only about half of the 40 or so people at the fish fry seemed interested in what Goldwater had to say.

Even though the candidate had a microphone, at times it was hard to hear him, due to the din of several conversations taking place amongst people in the hall.

It reached the point where the candidate asked, “Anybody listening out there?”

Things got better when the talkers were “shushed” a few times by others in the hall.

Goldwater proudly told the crowd he's a member of the Minutemen and has seen the situation at the border deteriorate with illegal crossers changing numerically and demographically, from 2,000 males around 25 years old crossing every day, increasing to 6,000 to 8,000 people, many of them families, heading north in anticipation of easier sledding under a proposed new law which passed the U.S. Senate.

He referred to three of his Arizona Republican colleagues who support illegal immigration reform - Sen. John McCain and congressmen Jeff Flake and Jim Kolbe as “the three amnesty amigos.”

Goldwater favors building a “tent city” at the border to house illegal immigrants nabbed crossing into the U.S.

Any Arizona cities that offer sanctuary to illegals should lose state funding, according to Goldwater. That statement got a decent round of applause from the audience.

Goldwater didn't limit his remarks to immigration. He also advocated freezing the assessed value of property and capping “the tax rate they charge against the assessed value.”

He favors slowly repealing the state income tax “on a 10 percent annual basis.”

Regarding education, Goldwater believes “teachers need to take the classroom back.” He believes laws should be passed to indemnify teachers and school administrators against lawsuits from disgruntled students and their parents.

Now, more good news for Goldwater. He got quite a few $5 Clean Elections donations, one of the reasons he was on tour in Mohave County Friday.

It was at least Goldwater's third visit to Bullhead City, as he attempts to defeat his main GOP competitor - Len Munsil - in the September primary, and square-off with Napolitano in November.

Staff writer Neil Young covers city and state issues. Contact him at 928-763-2505, ext. 141, or by e-mail at nyoung@ mohavedailynews.com