The Cochise County (AZ) Republican Committee is currently wallowing in a fecal storm of their own making. Apparently their “favorite son” perennial candidate with a fabricated portfolio has become a political Frankenstein. It’s not as if they weren’t warned.
Brandon Martin is a case study in crap candidates creating a false persona in order to gain high political office. He is not the only one – by far.
I first met Brandon Martin in 2016 while having breakfast at the counter of Papa’s ‘50s Diner down on Highway 92 in Sierra Vista on a Saturday morning. He tapped me on the shoulder and introduced himself. He offered a ham-fisted handshake. I saw a tall, round faced, pudgy man with beady brown eyes. His voice was that of one who had polished it for political purposes. He seemed a little embarrassed that his beautiful, bi-racial daughter, whom he had asked to wait in the foyer, had joined him while asking me to join his campaign as a candidate for Congressional House of Representative from LD 2. I guess Martin thought I was a white racist seeing I was wearing a motorcycle vest and had rather his daughter not be seen by me. I found several of his assumptions about me odd, pathetic and wrong. He obviously did not know people. That first impression resulted in my telling him I would instead run for Congress myself specifically to beat candidates like him. I was joking at the time.
In 2019 I was lying in bed listening to the morning news about the tsunami of illegal aliens pouring across the southern border. It made me angry since I had struggled to enforce immigration law at America’s most corrupt Port of Entry for eleven years and nine months (see 10 Years on the Line: My War on the Border). Like a bolt of lightning, I sat upright and shouted “I can fix this!” What a massive burst of hubris it was. I thought because I was a retired immigration inspector, a retired Green Beret captain with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a master’s degree in Public Administration and was a former Master Instructor of counterinsurgency doctrine at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center & School, I was qualified to run for congress and offer my expertise in countering not only the influx of illegals but on foreign policy as well since I had lived and deployed to many countries in the Far East, South America, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. Silly me!
In my naivete’ I went to the public library and googled how to run for congress. I found to my amazement all it took was to register with the Secretary of State by filling out a form and downloading the candidate signature petition on which registered Republicans or Independents could sign.
With my petition in hand, I stopped by the Cochise County Republican office on Fry Blvd. to meet the folks there. When I introduced myself to Cochise County committee chairman Robert Montgomery, he asked me to go with him to the back room where he asked me “Who authorized you to run for office?” I didn’t know I needed permission to run for political office but explained my reasons for running thinking I would be at least competitive with others. Montgomery told me “Well, you can run but every one in this office is supporting Brandon Martin.” I had read Martin’s resume’ and saw through the typical exaggerations created by the army’s retirement resource officer hyping mundane job descriptions into heroic fiction. “Why are you supporting Brandon Martin who has no real substance?” I asked. “Because he has the advantage of having run before” Montgomery replied. “Yeah, but he lost! That sounds like the definition of insanity!” I said. Montgomery was unphased. He gave me a few cursory words of advice and I left. I found every time I entered the Cochise County Republican Committee office I received a glacial reception – except during a couple of pot luck lunches with the adorable, little old ladies of the office. I really enjoyed my conversations with them. I usually found my petition signature clipboard buried under others’ clipboards. At the West End Fair, I arrived early to help set up the GOP tent and attached my banner to one of the tables to advertise to the passing public. Brandon’s cartel had a table adjacent to it and I overheard them sniggering about challenging every one of my signatures. Robert Montgomery told me previously “No one ever checks those signatures.”
There was one particular Brandon Martinette of Asian descent whose vehicle was plastered with Brandon Martin bumper stickers. I saw him at Chosin Gun store when Obama was running for president. He bragged that he and his wife had “passports to Costa Rica in case Obama was elected president”. Good riddance to you and all your fellow sunshine patriots. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
My campaign T-shirt logo was the gold “Like” thumbs-up meme above “Iron Mike” = “Like Iron Mike for CD 2” in similitude of Eisenhower’s “I like Ike”. Admittedly one had to be of a certain generation to know that but it sang with the younger crowd as well. My theme song was going to be “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty. Brandon Martin’s cabal tried several times hiding my banner with their posters. Childish and petty.
Robert Montgomery also told me the GOP committees don’t endorse any candidate during the primary. Coulda fooled me! I thought I’d jumped into a pool of piranha!
Other than the few signatures I got on the street at the 2019 West End Fair, the only surprising benefit I got from attending the Fair was winning a Harley Davidson motorcycle in a raffle by the Nomaden MC across the street! The Fair was the first week in June. In late August I received a garbled phone call mentioning “West End Fair.” I called back and was asked “if I wanted the bike.” “What bike?” I asked. “The bike you won in the raffle!” he said. “I bought a $120 raffle ticket?” I asked incredulously. I never buy Lotto or any other kind of gambling ticket. “Yeah! And you won!” he laughed. I already had four Harleys -and it was small for me – so I sold it for what Wall Street calls a “ten bagger.”
Attending Party functions was an eye-opening experience. First, in Cochise County, literally within a few miles of one another, there are three Republican committees: The “country club” committee located in the HOA of Winterhaven consisting of mostly retired officers’ wives who are under the mistaken impression they hold the same rank as their husbands; the Thunder Mountain committee consisting of the home-grown, non-military Cochise County natives – apparently a sect apart from the snooty officers’ wives; and the Cochise County Republican committee office itself. At the Thunder Mountain committee, though I got the fish eye from the two local state legislators at the buffet table, the folks sitting at the tables liked my resume and I was treated decently by the proctor. The Benson committee folks were warm, friendly and business-like – as were the Tucson GOP committee officials and the Green Valley GOP committee (the latter like a homecoming in their congeniality). One of the Green Valley members looked at my resume’ and said “If half of this is true you have my vote!” I assured him it all true.
Rather than a congenial collage of candidate colleagues, I found I was a threat to the Cochise County Sierra Vista committees’ “favorite sons”. My naivete’ knew no limits.
My two worst mistakes were believing I needed to hire a “campaign manager” and a “campaign strategist”. The campaign manager, Christine Bauserman, had worked for the Trump campaign in Arizona. Upon Trump’s election she had gotten a job at the Dept. of Transportation for a short while. She arrived almost thirty minutes late for our first meeting and grilled me about being a real Green Beret. She was getting her information from a former enlisted Green Beret who had served a term in the State House. He was an obnoxious, ignorant little twit. I tried explaining to the potential campaign manager that yes, I was enlisted as well, but I had been ordered to go to Officer Candidate School by my Silver Star awardee battalion commander and, as an officer in Special Forces we moved around in various positions required for promotion – not like her obnoxious friend who refused to believe I was SF because he “didn’t know me” when we were at one time in sister companies. That was not unheard of since even teams in the same company were deployed so often as to be “ships passing in the night” so to speak. Attending a Green Valley GOP dinner later I had occasion to approach this obnoxious asshole and attempted to explain how we never met. This mouth with a Napoleonic Complex actually poked me in the chest telling me his view of things – from an enlisted soldier who spent his entire career on the same team doing the same missions over and over ad nauseum. I almost broke his index finger and shoved it up his ass. I was warned about Christine Bauserman by a good friend in Phoenix. I’m a forgiving soul (often to my regret) and hired her because she seemed tenacious and I identified with getting a raw deal.
One legitimately critical staffer is a treasurer. That’s the person who will keep you out of prison by keeping track of the tangled financial aspects. I found an excellent one in Tucson but she was already taken by another candidate. I was referred to one who did it most assiduously from New Jersey – of all places.
Bauserman convinced me she could get me the right contacts in the GOP – even a possible Trump endorsement. I hired her for $300 a month. She immediately suggested a trip to D.C. to introduce myself to the National Republican Party headquarters, an Arizona congressman, and an introduction at Grover Norquist’s show. At Norquist’s show I introduced myself as intending to be the “first immigration inspector elected to Congress” along with my qualifications. Two people approached me afterward and gave me their names along with contacts to influential people in Arizona. Breakfast with the Arizona congressman was slotted for 30 minutes. We talked for an hour and twenty-seven minutes. I could see the stress on his face. He was obviously a good, kind man trying to do the right thing in a hostile environment. At the RNC headquarters, a young political liaison entered the room and said “We rarely see a candidate with your qualifications, Mr. Ligon.” I replied “That’s sad!” He informed me the RNC does not endorse candidates during the primary (apparently unlike the Cochise County GOP committee) and gave me a questionnaire to fill out at my leisure. It reminded me of the loyalty oaths of the McCarthy era and I threw it away.
Before leaving RNC headquarters, my campaign “strategist”, Jason Gilbert, suddenly started proposing to the liaison staffer a plan he had conjured up regarding illegal aliens. He thought it was a good idea to intern illegals into “education camps” where they would be taught the American historical narrative. You know, like the re-education camps the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese sent pro-government Vietnamese to after the fall of Saigon. Not only a bad idea on its’ face but it inferred that illegal aliens would be allowed to stay in the United States – an idea I adamantly opposed.
Jason Gilbert was a strange egg. He approached me at the “Candidate Training Seminar” in Phoenix using the hook that he is also a former Marine that could use technology to expand my exposure. Being the political neophyte (aka: gullible) candidate I was (and always willing to give a Marine a chance) I let him hang on awhile. During that time, he never gave me an answer to what political campaign he had worked on previously. He would call from his home in San Diego spending hours explaining computer technology to me in order to have video conferencing. It was exhausting after spending time beating the pavement and attending luncheons. He insisted I video myself expressing different emotions: happiness / smiling; anger, etc. I started doing this for a few minutes before I finally grew a pair and told him I wasn’t doing that. He convinced me his presence was critical to the D.C. trip. Prior to picking Gibson up at the Phoenix Airport, I told him how (like him) General George Patton, was “diminutive” and was called “Baby Face George” for his childlike facial expression. (Patton was actually 6’2”). I told him Patton had affected a “war face” and used excessive profanity to make up for his appearance. Getting in the car, Gibson was scowling. I thought he’d had a bad flight until I realized he was seriously affecting Patton’s demeanor! Wow.
Later, toward the end, he finally sent me the requested video of a candidate for the Florida State legislature he had “managed.” The candidate looked like a homeless, alcoholic whose main plank was legalizing marijuana – again something I am adamantly opposed to.
While in D.C., I became aware Bauserman had conjured up this premature trip to get me to pay for her to go to D.C. to help her daughter relocate to D.C. for a job. She was spending her time between me, getting her daughter settled in, and schmoozing telephonically with Steve Bannon who was overseas instructing political factions how to seize power. I believe she was late starting every morning due to getting alcohol off her breath. When my Uber driver had a high-speed, front wheel blow out in D.C. traffic on the way to the airport, she seemed unphased by my news. Toward the end when she knew I was going to fire her, she called early one morning and said “I LOVE you!” in slurred speech then hung up.
The second thing the RNC liaison told me was I had to immediately get in touch with Jim Click in Tucson. The “Hi! I’m Jim Click of Jim Click Ford!” fame controls the money for GOP candidates in southern Arizona. I had tried to contact Jim Click several times by phone and email but he never responded. As I was leaving, the RNC liaison told me Jim Click had hired a D.C. lobbyist to run for the position I was seeking– and that I needed to raise $350,000.00 to run a successful campaign.
I found my campaign “manager,” Christine Bauserman, was not only an alcoholic but bankrupt and illiterate as well. My campaign “strategist,” Jason Gilbert, was jealous of her and wanted to know how much I was paying her. I made the mistake of telling him and he wanted $500 a month to “strategize” my campaign – both salaries to increase proportionate to amount of campaign funds raised. Gilbert arranged dinner with his father at the famous Willard Hotel, the “Hotel of Presidents”. Gilbert told me his father had very close connections to Trump. Gibson’s father worked for the government “monitoring foreign aid to ensure the money got to where it was supposed to.” It was a cordial dinner. Gilbert said his father would either pay for dinner or donate $500 to my campaign. He did neither. I paid for dinner.
Returning home, seeing signs of increasing discord between Bauserman and Gilbert, and particularly Bauserman’s demeaning conduct toward Pima Republican Committee staffers (I felt like slapping her face); indications of a “fix” already decided by Jim Click, and continued animosity by several of the GOP “elite” in Cochise County I became discouraged. My personal campaign investment was heading in the wrong direction. I decided to offer Bauserman and Gibson the position of fund raisers instead of what I thought were unnecessary positions as manager and strategist (at least at this local level). I discovered fund raisers get a percentage of what they raise. They both declined so I fired them.
My idealistic naivete’ became overwhelmed. I had no social circle of support. I thought I could gain a significant following simply based on my unique qualifications. How utterly naïve of me. Thinking of the intense number of man hours it took me just to get nine hundred signatures alone walking the pavement, a few friends who said they would gather signatures had not, and not wanting to ask family and friends to put good money after bad, I decided the “fix” was in and I quit the campaign. Both the campaign and quitting made me sick to my stomach. I had never quit anything in my life. I have failed frequently in life but I had “failed while daring greatly” and adapted and overcame. This effort felt like bathing in acid. I often thought of the scene in The Green Mile when John Koffee enters the electric chair room seeing the crowd of angry witnesses. “It feels like bees stinging me all over” he said. With ya there, buddy!
My deepest regret is in disappointing family, friends and strangers who supported me. Life experience and the short campaign finally opened my eyes to what I saw in the AZ congressman’s face: good people get destroyed in politics. The power mongers in monolithic government will not tolerate a reformer.
“Fake resume’” Brandon Martin, who lost his second run for Congress in 2020, is now the Cochise County committee chairman – probably to obtain Party support for another run for Congress. Martin has just received a restraining order issued against him for a violent temper tantrum with his daughter while holding a rifle. Apparently armed, domestic violence is not a disqualifier for political office in Cochise County. Former chairman, Robert Montgomery is having “secret meetings” behind Brandon’s back. The other two Cochise County Republican committees in Sierra Vista continue their biased aloofness from each other.
Of such is why the Left is winning the Long War.
