Audio By Carbonatix
The day has finally arrived, Arizona: The state’s much-loathed photo-radar speed-enforcement program comes to an end tonight.
At 11:59 p.m. today, the plug will be pulled on all the state’s speed-cams, and anyone caught speeding past one will no longer have to fear a process server dropping off a nasty-gram at their homes.
Don’t unleash your lead-foot just yet, though. According to Redflex, the company that operates the cameras, anyone caught zooming past a speed-cam until 11:59 p.m. today is still on the hook for a speeding ticket.
Like all things during an election season, putting an end to speed cams has political ramifications. And nobody is reaping the benefits of giving the boot to speed-cams more than Governor Jan Brewer.
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Jan and the Brew Crew have seen an astonishing boost in the polls lately — the Arizona Republic says Brewer is currently “surfing a political wave of popularity.”
According to the latest poll numbers, Brewer would get 57 percent of the vote in the GOP primary, which can be mostly attributed to Brewer’s signing SB 1070. But Jan’s made some other savvy political moves in her rise to GOP super-stardom.
Brewer proved she had the public’s support when Prop 100 (the sales-tax increase) passed a public vote.
Brewer, well-aware speed-cams weren’t exactly winning popularity contests, pounced on her wave of popularity back in May — just days after signing SB 1070 — by re-announcing that she would pull the plug on speed-cams, even though she’d already made the announcement back in January.
As expected, her poll numbers went up even more.
Now that speed-cams will be officially done-zo, and they coincidentally will become so just a day after Brewer’s poll numbers show she’s more popular than ever, don’t be too surprised to see Jan surf this political wave to even higher poll numbers.
Like it or don’t, it looks like Arizona can expect four more years of a politically savvy but — in the words of the great Larry Gaydos — “intellectually bankrupt” Brewer administration.
