In election forums, he proclaimed, “I’ve never been fired from a job.”
Babeu’s claim is misleading because you can’t be fired from elected office.
The closest equivalent is being voted out or failing to be elected. In that sense, voters have fired Babeu.
He’s spent 40% of his adult life in elected office: two years on a Massachusetts city council and four on a county commission, plus four years as Pinal County Sheriff.
He was defeated for re-election as city councilman and voters refused to hire him in four of six elections.
What about Babeu’s non-elected work history? There too one finds a pattern of incomplete performance.
In his Pinal County campaign he touted experience as headmaster and executive director of the closed DeSisto School for troubled kids in Massachusetts, a position he left to run and lose election as Mayor. Subsequent stories surfaced about student abuse and Babeu dating a 17 year old student.
Another intriguing work history is his 20 years Army National Guard career from which he suddenly retired. Why early release of a field-grade officer from border deployment and why the untimely separation?
The quick, and incomplete, answer -- politics.
During his congressional run, Babeu’s campaign came to a sudden stop with revelations of internet indiscretions and relationship with his Mexican immigrant lover, Jose Orozco.
Immediately Babeu held a press conference defending what he maintained was a “private” matter, his sexuality. Though his issues were private and personal, Babeu appeared in uniform at the taxpayer-owned PCSO, surrounded by uniformed and civilian employees. If his personal social and sexual life was “private,” why use the public’s sheriff office venue?
Fundraising and use of other people’s money has been another Babeu trademark: spending donors’ almost $1 million during his two campaigns and successive deficit-spending of taxpayers dollars, leaving questions about official and unofficial expenditures and possible intermingling of public and private funds.
Politics lured Babeu into his brief congressional campaign. After failing to explain away internet sexual indiscretions, he returned to his PCSO refuge, where he moved aside then sheriff-candidate Steve Henry.
In addition to the above deficiencies, his claimed border fence game plan remains an irrational pipe dream; and he fails to explain his inability to deal with his reported 75 to 100 drug trafficking observation outposts in Pinal County.
In campaign forums, Babeu asks to be judged by performance and results.
So much for performance and results of a career pock-marked by high-sounding public aspirations and bombastic claims matched against the reality of a flawed personal and public persona.
Babeu predicted inevitable armed conflict between deputies and smugglers in Vekol Valley. Twenty months have passed. His ploy did not play.
He is now assembling an Anti-Smuggling Posse in another hyped but doomed maneuver. Without decisive action by the Board of Supervisors and county voters, Babeu may yet be able to stage that predicted armed confrontation and establish the one-man rule he so much craves.
A whole lot of something to think about.
