The race for attorney general in Arizona heated up after the GOP nominee's 15-year-old writings on a website for Ron Paul fans were unearthed.
"Abe Hamadeh has built his campaign for attorney general around cleaning up elections in Arizona. Yet as a teenager, he boasted to an online message board about voting before he was legally allowed to and altering his mom's ballot," the Phoenix New Timesreported. "The posts were among thousands Hamadeh made to an online message board beginning in 2007. When he wasn't bragging about altering ballots, he was offering antisemitic and sexist rants, backing Sheriff Joe Arpaio and arguing that voting should be limited to college graduates who pass intelligence tests."
Hamadeh has vowed to prosecute based off of the debunked "2000 Mules" movie by Dinesh D’Souza.
"In June 2007, Hamadeh, then 16 years old, became an active member of the online message board Ron Paul Forums, a virtual gathering space for supporters of Ron Paul, a Libertarian, former member of Congress and three-time presidential candidate. The most recent archived version of Hamadeh’s profile on the site shows that by October 3, 2010, he had posted 4,163 times," the New Times reported. "In a series of posts that started on October 5, 2008, the 17-year-old aspiring professional wrestler claimed that he altered and then cast his mother’s absentee ballot for Barack Obama, a then-U.S. senator who was running for president."
GOP nominee for governor Kari Lake donated to Obama in 2008.
“Obama is getting all of this crap simply cause hes (sic) black, he has an Arab name, hes (sic) the only senator who is black in the Senate, he is successful, and he is a Harvard Law graduate, they're scared they might have a smart man in the White House,” Hamadeh wrote. “Based on Barack Obama's intelligence I casted (sic) my vote for him yesterday through absentee.”
“No I cannot vote, I just submitted my mothers absentee ballot, she votes who I vote for, she voted for Ron Paul, and I’m saddened that I had to vote for Barack Obama, but it was the right thing I had to do," Hamadeh explained.
Columnist Laurie Roberts argued in the Arizona Republic that the old forum posts are not why Hamadeh is unfit to be attorney general.
"You should not take a pass on voting for Abe Hamadeh because of his prior boast that he committed voter fraud to help Barack Obama become president," she wrote. "He was 17, after all, and kids do and say dumb things. But you absolutely should consider the things he says and does now that he’s 31. These days, Hamadeh sounds more like a toddler than a teen – or a fully grown adult."
Roberts went on to detail Hamadeh's attacks on Arizona Corporation Commission and Arizona State Law Prof. Kris Mayes, the Democratic Party nominee for attorney general.
'Imagine an attorney general running around declaring someone a crook and corrupt despite a complete and total lack of evidence that it is so," Roberts wrote. "This, from an officer of the court – a candidate who wants a job that requires him to be governed not by crazy conspiracy theories or the jerk of his well-oiled knee but by facts and by the law."
