On Thursday afternoon, I broke the story that David Garcia, the Democrat candidate most likely to face Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey in November, had hired a digital director who tweeted anti-America, anti-Arizona, and anti-law enforcement tweets. That evening, the staffer, Xenia Orona, offered her resignation and the campaign accepted it.
“JUST IN Democratic candidate for governor David Garcia’s spox tells me campaign’s digital director ‘offered her resignation and the campaign has accepted it.’ Says campaign learned about tweets from [PJ Media] story,” 12 News’s Brahm Resnik reported on Twitter.
JUST IN Democratic candidate for governor David Garcia's spox tells me campaign's digital director "offered her resignation and the campaign has accepted it." Says campaign learned about tweets from @PJMedia_com story. #AZGOV https://t.co/m2AUdT7k1c
— BrahmResnik (@brahmresnik) August 10, 2018
He’s referring to this story.
#BREAKING #AZGov Dem. David Garcia hired a digital director, Xenia Orona, who tweeted an "open letter to Arizona: F**k you," and called America a "#shithole country." When @PJMedia_com asked about the tweets, his campaign was silent.https://t.co/hStehGPKRv
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) August 10, 2018
Orona’s tweets went back years, from an attack on Arizona in 2012 to a quip calling America a “sh*thole country” this past January.
“An open letter to Arizona: F**k you,” Xenia Orona tweeted on November 6 2012, when Republican Mitt Romney defeated then-President Barack Obama in the Grand Canyon State. She has since deleted the tweet.
Twitter screenshot.
Orona also called America a “sh*thole country” in a tweet she deleted after PJ Media broke the news.
Twitter screenshot.
Her tweets against law enforcement may have been the most egregious. Not only did Orona call for abolishing the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but she declared that “law and order is the smokescreen that bigots hide their hate behind.” My report here at PJ Media came as Phoenix is mourning police trooper Tyler Edenhofer, killed in the line of duty.
I did not call for Orona’s resignation, but did ask the campaign to respond to the tweets, which I cited in the email request. The campaign did not respond by press time (I gave them 6.5 hours).
While I did not intend to get Orona fired, and do not like the idea of old tweets resulting in job terminations, it did make sense for the Garcia campaign to part ways with her, or at least reprimand her or denounce the tweets.
Garcia has doubled down on his Latino roots, even going so far as to say that someone with his last name should win — an identity politics push if ever there was one. Parting ways with Orona allows him to send the message that his identity politics does not lead him in an anti-American or anti-Arizona direction. All the same, until he specifies his position, this just looks like damage control.
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