Democratic AG candidate mistake round-up

By Casey Newton
azcentral.com
June 24, 2010

The debate between Democratic candidates for attorney general taped at 5:30 last night, but the debate about the debate has raged all day.

The first controversy arose when Felecia Rotellini, the former head of the Department of Financial Institutions, accused opponent Vince Rabago of "political grandstanding" when he filed a lawsuit against a payday lender shortly before quitting to run for attorney general.

Rabago, who was an assistant attorney general at the time, filed suit against lender Quik Cash accusing them of deceptive practices.

Rotellini said Rabago filed the case only to serve as a talking point in his attorney general campaign, then "walked out" on the "working families" he has spent much of his campaign talking about.

"You walked out on those families, Vince," she said, going for the jugular. "That lawsuit has stopped in its tracks. You didn't do anything to stop the payday lenders."

Rabago protested that, in fact, an injunction had been filed in the case, effectively stopping the payday lenders, but Rotellini wasn't having it.

"That's a lie," she said, raising her voice. "There is no injunction on the books."

It didn't take long after that for the Rabago campaign to show that, indeed, there was an injunction on the books (PDF).

"I hope my opponent is ready to eat some crow," Rabago said after the debate.

Rotellini delegated crow-eating duties to spokesman Dave Cieslak, who had this to say:

"In the heat of a TV debate, Felecia was mistaken about an injunction issued last year and regrets the error," Cieslak said in a statement. "Felecia has been fighting for Arizona families for 17 years and protecting seniors as a prosecutor and financial watchdog, and she'll continue that fight in the attorney general's office."

The whole heat-of-the-moment explanation strains credulity, though, as immediately after the debate, reporters received a helpful explanatory e-mail from the Rotellini campaign with attached legal documents purporting to show that the case has stalled out. (As of March, the parties were working on a settlement.)

"Felecia apparently can't or won't even do basic legal research," said Gilberto Zaragoza, a Rabago spokesman, on the candidate's website. "And now she wants to be Arizona attorney general, our top lawyer!? We need an attorney general that can get their facts straight."

WATCH VIDEO OF THE DEMOCRATIC DEBATE



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