UP AGAINST LAWALL: You may remember Democrat Carmine Cardamone, who is seeking a state house seat in District 11, and who was nailed by TPD in the early hours of primary day with a sign belonging to Pima County Attorney candidate Barbara LaWall in his truck. Cardamone swears he was simply helping the LaWall campaign by picking up a damaged sign. LaWall said she didn't buy his story and pressed theft charges. After considerable heat from Democratic party types friendly to both to drop the charges, LaWall announced the alleged crime wasn't really committed against her, but against her campaign committee, so she was really powerless to drop the charges. Only one problem with that: The chairman of LaWall's committee is--Barbara LaWall! This Cardamone prosecution is beginning to look a little lame. We're told the poor schmuck even had a couple of LaWall signs posted at his campaign headquarters before this incident occurred--not the act of a LaWall political foe. We certainly hope LaWall, if she's elected, has better judgment when it comes to deciding which cases to prosecute. FIFE RECALL ON THE FRITZ? They aren't exactly lining up in droves to circulate petitions to recall Gov. J. Fife Deadbeat III. Lamenting that this one isn't as easy as his previous petition drives, local pol John Kromko is concerned the project could be a bust. We'd like to point out to Kromko and the rest of the recall gang that this ballot drive differs from others in several respects. Most successful petition drives now involve paid circulators, which is why they've moved from a citizen-participation process to a citizens-with-money participation process. And voters aren't as unhappy with Fife as they were with former Gov. Evan Mecham a few years ago. Recall organizers against Mecham could count on big bucks from some of the special interests Mecham had ticked off. Not the case this time, because the special interest types all like Fife. And finally, Kromko needs to face up to the fact that a great many people have had it with any petition drive he leads. They've been burned before by failed drives and don't want to repeat the process. AND SPEAKING OF J. FIFE DEADBEAT III: Fife recently demonstrated his own commitment to the environment by driving a new state car equipped with compressed natural gas. The day after he debuted his spiffy new Lincoln Town Car at a press conference, the car was spotted sitting for about an hour in a 20-minute parking spot in front of Nick's Restaurant on Central Avenue in Phoenix during the lunch hour. The car idled the entire time the driver waited for the Guv to finish his meal, because if he'd turned the engine off, he couldn't have run the air conditioning and the car might have gotten too warm. Sounds like Fife is gonna have a tough time adjusting to prison life. SLEAZE IN THE 'BURBS: All residents of the Amphitheater School District just received a 12-page, two-color tabloid extolling the virtues of all those wonderful folks on their school board and all the great things they've done for kids and parents. Melissa Franklin at Amphi tells The Skinny that School Views is published twice a year and that the tabloid cost about $8,500 to print and mail. We're sure it's purely coincidental this PR job was dropped two weeks before a general election in which two of the board members, Virginia Houston and Richard Scott, are seeking re-election. And so is the fact that Amphi School District President Vicki Cox-Golder is a candidate for Pima County supervisor. Cox-Golder had five photos in the tabloid, and the other candidates had several photos themselves. Even a U.S. congressman has to stop sending mass mailers at taxpayer expense several months before an election. Put this in with the sleazy land deals cut by their exclusive real estate agent and Cox-Golder campaign chairman Bill Arnold, and you have another local government that smells of corruption. Best response for Amphi voters: Reject anybody who campaigns with your tax money. HARDBALL IN THE HINTERLANDS: If you want to see real hardball politics, try the Cochise County Sheriff's race. Democratic incumbent John Pintek is facing the cousin of Jimmy Judd, the man Pintek defeated four years ago. You may remember Judd ran law enforcement down there as his private fiefdom for years. Pintek creamed Judd in the 1992 Democratic primary and Judd's former undersheriff, Larry Dever, is trying to unseat Pintek as a Republican in this year's race. Pintek has been a pretty good sheriff from most accounts, and he didn't have a tough act to follow. Judd and Dever had more jail breaks--eight in seven years--than Elizabeth Taylor had husbands. Both Dever and Judd are acting like they don't even know each other, which is a little hard to swallow, since they not only served together but grew up together and only live a mile or so apart in St. David, where their mothers were first cousins. The negatives are flying, with Pintek accusing Dever of being part of the Judd regime and responsible for a laundry list of mismanagement, ranging from a badly handled jail and untrained personnel to nepotism and general incompetence. Dever has chosen to respond via surrogates, one of which was a stalking horse named Les Sargent, who ran against Pintek in the Democratic primary and who now supports Republican Dever. Katherine Senter, an employee of the Cochise County Sheriff's Department hired during the Judd era and admittedly a Dever supporter, garnered statewide press by accusing Pintek of having run Sargent's contributors' list through the state narcotics computer. She filed a complaint with the Attorney General and claimed Pintek had violated the confidentiality statutes by attempting to use the computer for a political purpose. Senter filed a restraining order to keep Pintek, her boss, away from her by denying him access to the sheriff's building, claiming fear of retaliation! The alleged violation occurred last August, so Senter's timing is a little suspicious, particularly when you note the Dever sign in her yard. And while Pintek may have run the list, there's no evidence he did anything with it, which may be why the Attorney General referred Senter's complaint to his office's election division and not the criminal side. But in releasing both the names and the fact that they were run through the computer to the press, Senter would seem to be the one who violated the confidentiality law for a political purpose. Oooops. Senter withdrew her restraining order request after the press reported it, and Pintek cannot legally comment. But try this. Sargent had 22 contributors from Pima County, all with maximum or close-to-maximum contributions totaling more than $5,000. That kind of money goes a long way in a Cochise County primary. Many of the contributors who listed their occupations as "cashier" or "restaurant worker." If you were in law enforcement and responsible for 82 miles of border with Mexico, wouldn't you be a little curious, as we are, as to why these folks--who don't even live in Cochise County--have such a great interest in who held your job? Of course, it could be completely innocent--maybe they're all just somebody's cousin.

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