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Opinion

Reveles: Supervisors should lead Pinal County’s political factions in reconciliation

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The following statement was made at the Jan. 3 meeting of the Pinal County Board of Supervisors:

Three years ago on Jan. 6, 2021, you and I witnessed a day of infamy. The first time that a defeated American president attempted to retain power by violently seeking to prevent the constitutionally mandated peaceful transfer of presidential power. The violence played out while we sat in this room during a Board of Supervisors meeting.

Yet, here we are three years later as oath-keepers and citizens pledging allegiance to our flag while some among us continue supporting the criminally indicted former president’s campaign to regain the presidency from which he mounted his attempted insurrection against our flag and our Constitution.

As we begin a new year, I earnestly propose we reach out to each other in a genuine attempt at reconciliation of our competing political parties.

Not to comfort ourselves but to restore trust in our elections and our courts for the future of our children and grandchildren as they assume responsibility of working peacefully towards our country’s more perfect union.

I’ve made several, perhaps feeble but sincere, private suggestions to leaders of Pinal County’s political parties in this very room. Proposing that we meet to find ways of bringing our feuding factions together.

To date, those private invitations have been ignored.

As we begin a new year of potentially cataclysmic impact on our democratic republic, I publicly again invite the leadership of our competing political parties to begin a series of civil dialogue to pull us back from a fear-infused political abyss that clearly faces us this election year.

As we approach the third anniversary of the unprecedented violent attack by a president against our nation’s constitutionally mandated peaceful transfer of power, I encourage you — our county’s elected leaders — to genuinely be oath-keepers and actively lead Pinal County’s political factions towards reconciliation.

Your failure to timely exert leadership against the divisive forces within our county will signal that it’s time to support new leadership.

Jan. 6 can remain a day of infamy or it can become a day of renewed commitment to form a more perfect union against the promoters of distrust of our elections and our courts.

opinion, letters

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