Opinion: Given the Arizona Senate’s newfound horror of ‘plagiarism’, when can we expect to see Sen. Jake Hoffman given the boot?
I will expect to see Sen. Jake Hoffman’s letter of resignation any day now. Either that, or the Arizona Senate surely will feel compelled to kick him out.
They will send the guy packing, won’t they?
On Thursday, Hoffman’s inquisition squad rejected Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ nominee to head up the state Department of Housing, citing a “history of repeated and seemingly pervasive plagiarism” while working on affordable housing issues.
Joan Serviss, in her previous job as executive director of the nonprofit Arizona Housing Commission, wrote several letters advocating fair housing policies wherein she lifted whole paragraphs from other sources without attributing the work.
“We cannot allow folks who have a questionable professional record of conduct to move forward,” Hoffman huffed.
Hoffman has neither honor nor honesty to judge
So says the Republican senator who in 2020 signed his name to a document falsely claiming to be duly elected by Arizona’s voters to cast an electoral vote for Donald Trump even though Joe Biden won Arizona.
The senator who earlier that year ran an internet troll farm, paying teens to post conservative talking points and baseless conspiracy theories on social media — all aimed at getting President Donald Trump reelected.
The senator who on Thursday pronounced himself aghast that anyone would lift someone else’s words without attribution.
He noted especially that she appropriated wholesale swaths from a 2019 Bloomberg News story in a letter to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, urging the agency not to weaken its enforcement of the Fair Housing Act.
What Serviss did is common practice in advocacy work
Serviss and several others who testified on her behalf said it’s common practice in the advocacy community to use what she called “shared language” in letters urging government agencies to support or oppose policy changes.
But Hoffman wasn’t having it.
“This is not normal practice in the professional world,” he scolded.
Never mind that his Rally Forge digital marketing firm that did just that during the runup to the 2020 election.
While Serviss was cutting and pasting material written by Bloomberg and others in order to advocate for fair housing practices, Hoffman’s teen trolls were cutting and pasting material written by Turning Point Action in order to spread disinformation on the internet.
Funny how Hoffman defends practice when he does it
Hoffman paid teens to blitz social media sites with Turning Point-supplied material that played down the threat of COVID-19 and warned that Democrats were using mail-in ballots to steal the election.
Without … wait for it … attributing the material to Turning Point.
Hoffman defended his cut-and-paste operation to the Washington Post, which broke the story in September 2020.
“Every working team within my agency works out of dozens of collaborative documents every day, as is common with all dynamic marketing agencies or campaign phone banks for example,” he told the Post.
So, it’s OK to use other people’s words to deceive voters but not to advocate for fair housing policies?
Got it.
Nominee rejection comes at a terrible cost to state
Serviss is just the latest casualty of Hoffman’s campaign to undermine Hobbs at every turn, having previously rejected or slow walked a number of her other Cabinet nominees.
In Thursday’s 3-2 party-line vote, his Committee on Director Nominations recommended that the Senate reject Serviss, calling her “unfit” to serve as the state’s housing director.
This, as the state confronts skyrocketing rents and a critical need for housing that people can afford.
As thousands upon thousands of people are evicted from their homes.
Fortunately, that’s not a problem for Sen. Hoffman.
Just this week, The Arizona Republic’s Ray Stern reported that his 2020 troll farm contract with Turning Point paid him a sweet $1.8 million.
Hoffman now lives in a million-dollar home in Queen Creek.
Reach Roberts at [email protected]. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @LaurieRoberts.
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