The Daily Agenda: Hate speech isn't free speech

Nazi salutes and the Pima County Supes … Roof rats are taking over the city … A new legislative challenger emerges.

The call-to-the-public at the Pima County Board of Supervisors meetings hit a new low last month when attendees were subjected to Nazi salutes and a slew of hate speech by a local Republican Party precinct committeeman.

At the same meeting, supervisors voted 3-2 to limit the public testimony portion of the meeting. Opponents of the proposal accused supervisors of limiting free speech, but the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council for Tucson and Southern wants to know if Nazi salutes are the type of speech Supervisors Steve Christy and Sharon Bronson wanted to protect when they later voted against limiting call-to-the-public.

Roger Dean Score, a longtime Republican Party activist and committeeman for Precinct 218, told the Tucson Agenda he made the gesture to indicate that Board Chair Adelita Grijalva and Supervisor Rex Scott were “acting much like the Nazis acted in their shutting down citizens from speaking to their representatives in government.”

Score first made the gesture during a Pride Month presentation, while several members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees were standing before the dais. He again threw up a Nazi salute during the call-to-the-public portion of the meeting. 

Making a Nazi salute violates the meeting rules of decorum, according to county spokesman Mark Evans, who noted that least one other member of the public copied Score, but was stopped by the woman who was with him.

But the rules weren’t enforced for Score, a frequent disruptor of local government meetings.

Lynn Davis was in the audience attending her first Board of Supervisors meeting that day. She’s the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council for Tucson and Southern Arizona, and she was appalled by the gesture — and by how desensitized the audience was to that kind of hateful symbolism, as she detailed in an op-ed in the Arizona Jewish Post.

“(A)n attendee made a straight-arm Nazi salute. Repeatedly. And nobody said a word. What’s going on here?” she wrote.

Davis specifically called out supervisors Christy and Bronson, the two opposing votes to the motion to limit call to the audience, asking them to “state publicly whether the Nazi salute is really the type of speech that they are eager to protect.” We reached out to Bronson and Christy for comment, but neither replied.

“Even in today’s polarized world, being confronted with a Nazi salute in a public meeting with elected officials elicits a visceral response,” Davis wrote. “The man in this meeting intended to intimidate, to bully others into submission and complicity with their silence. And it worked.”

Grijalva didn’t see the gesture, Evans told us, as she was facing the opposite direction. (He said the other supervisors also may have missed it, either due to people blocking their view or because they were watching the presentation.) But she did shut Score down, interrupting his time at the microphone to tell him to “have a seat” and citing his “offensive language” when he objected.

“When told what Roger Score did, Chair Grijalva was stunned and left speechless at his disgusting, outrageous behavior,” Evans said.

Grijalva will warn people at future meetings that the board will have zero tolerance hate speech and Nazi salutes, and should she see or be made aware of Score making the gesture, he’ll be stopped, Evans said.

Score, a veteran who serves on the board of the Arizona Veterans Memorial Cemetery Foundation in Marana, clearly doesn’t see the problem. He continued to compare the supervisors to Nazis when we called him and claimed that by throwing up Nazi salutes at public meetings, he’s actually anti-fascist.

“The Nazis limited the voice of those who opposed their actions too,” Score told us when asked why he made the gesture. “I heavily oppose Nazis, the actions of Nazis, and even Nazis posing as representatives of free people.”

Brook Doty, the Arizona Republican Party’s LD17 chairman, did not respond to our request for comment about Score’s Nazi salutes. Neither did a representative from the Arizona Veterans Memorial Cemetery Foundation.

The Pima County Board of Supervisors will meet this morning at 9 a.m., with an abbreviated call to the audience. And maybe that’s for the best.

Abraham joins LD17 race: Democrat Morgan Abraham announced on Monday he plans to run for one of the state House seats in Legislative District 17. Abraham, a former state legislator, hopes to take one of the seats in the Tucson-area district from Reps. Cory McGarr or Rachel Jones, both first-term representatives and members of the Freedom Caucus.

Vail incorporation effort takes next step: The organizers of Incorporate Vail Arizona are asking the Pima County Board of Supervisors to approve circulating a petition so the measure can be put on the ballot in November, Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher wrote in a memo to the board. The supervisors also will consider allowing the creation of three “county islands,” areas that would not be incorporated, at the Tuesday board meeting.

Roof rats: Pest control experts say the roof rat problem facing residents of the Sam Hughes neighborhood will soon become a city-wide problem, the Arizona Daily Star’s Nicole Ludden reports. The evidence of roof rat activity in the area has been getting progressively worse for the past year with experts saying the rats likely originated from Phoenix, and just like Phoenix has seen in past years, the rodents will also spread across Tucson. City Council member Steve Kozachik is hosting a meeting tonight at 6 p.m. to discuss the problem and possible solutions.

You can be a part of helping to grow local journalism in Southern Arizona by just clicking a button. That’s way easier than solving a city-wide rat problem!

Mine sets timetable: The Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council has published a timetable detailing the permitting process for the Hermosa Critical Minerals Project in the Patagonia Mountains, according to Arizona Public Media’s Katya Mendoza. The underground mine, designed as the first netzero mining operation and the first dry stack tailings facility in the U.S., hopes to provide manganese and zinc and has been showcased as the first of its kind. The timetable includes final completion dates for federal environment reviews and other milestones over the next three years. This is the mine some Rio Rico residents are concerned will take over their town if officials rezone a huge area along Interstate 19.

Governor visits PCC: Gov. Katie Hobbs said Monday that renewed state funding is helping Pima Community College fulfill its mission to prepare students for jobs in emerging technology fields, the Arizona Daily Star’s David Wichner reports. STEM workforce training funding was restored to Pima County last fiscal year for the first time since 2016, with the state approving a $2 million appropriation to Pima College in 2024’s fiscal budget, along with $1.7 million for ongoing STEM workforce funding.

Forum on fentanyl: The Counter Narcotics Alliance, Tucson Police Department, Pima County Health Department and the Etano Center are hosting a community forum about fentanyl on July 25, with presentations by law enforcement, recovery specialists, health experts and people impacted by addiction. The event will take place at Pantano Christian Church from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

The same day Roger Score made the Nazi salute at the Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting, the Arizona Veterans Memorial Cemetery — of which Score is a board member — was commemorating the 79th anniversary of D-Day.