Stop picking on Sean Noble!

Crossposted at DemocraticDiva.com

Sean Noble is a type of right wing operative I find particularly annoying. These guys are total miscreants but have the cornpone choirboy routine down pat. They often like to preen about how they don’t use profanity, which makes them more moral than us dirty liberals. Arizona is thick with these homespun “consultants”, hoovering money out of gullible rich wingnuts with political aspirations, but Noble has really scored. He was recently the subject of a hard-hitting investigative report from ProPublica, in which he was revealed as the ringleader funneling “dark money” from the Koch brothers to various conservative causes around the country. One of them was Mitt Romney’s campaign – they might as well have taken a match to that money – but others were more successful, such as the defeat of the Scott Walker recall in Wisconsin. Dark Koch money has flowed like a river into Arizona. It funded the legal attack on independent redistricting and the defeat of Prop 204 (making the one cent sales tax permanent for education) in 2012, among plenty of other things.

Sean has made himself a tidy fortune being the Kochs’ errand boy but he’s feeling a little pouty these days over the negative attention he’s been getting. So he fired up his long-dormant blog “Noble Thinking” to lash back at those bullies at ProPublica and the Arizona Republic.

Inexplicably, five days after the ProPublica piece was posted on their website, The Arizona Republic ran it as a front page, tabloid-style story. It was a complete “cut and paste” job from ProPublica, and even though the Republic is my hometown paper, they never called me for comment.

There is something a bit surreal about walking out to your driveway and seeing yourself staring you in the eye. The nearly life-size photo on the front page caused one colleague to remark, “That’s a head shot size usually reserved for Presidents or terrorist leaders.” I’m clearly not the President.

Poor thing.

Fundamentally, the Left’s attack on conservative speech is driven by fear. The Left knows it can’t win the hearts and minds of the American public with their nanny-state mentality, so they have to change the subject away from the content of the speech and who is doing the speaking. Therefore, they attack.

I haven’t and won’t let attacks from the Left stop me from advancing the cause. It is disappointing that they have stooped to a level that includes airing personal issues related to my divorce. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a political operative (that is, a non-public official or non-candidate for office) having their divorce records exposed in the news media.

At the end of the day, I remain resolved to continue to fight for the freedoms endowed to us by our Creator, first and foremost among those being our First Amendment freedoms.

A friend of mine noted the post reminded him of this:

I’m not sure why Noble thinks that the details of his divorce are off limits because he’s a political operative. As far as I’m concerned if there’s anyone who ought to get their skeletons tossed from the closet at every opportunity it would be none other than shady political operatives. Generally speaking, it is amazing how entitled to privacy and discretion affluent conservative men believe themselves to be, as they push to police other people’s private lives and punish them brutally for their “sins”. Seriously, cry me a river, Sean. Here’s what the ProPublica piece says about his divorce.

In April 2013, Noble filed for divorce. Though his wife of more than 20 years was a homemaker raising their five children, he argued in filings that she deserved no spousal maintenance. After they separated, he bought a condo in Phoenix for himself for $510,000 and another for his parents for $181,500.

Noble had become involved with Elissa Scannell, a former scheduler for Shadegg who was his partner at DC London, records filed as part of the divorce case show. Just before the 2012 election, the two flew to see the World Series. According to documents submitted by his wife, Noble spent more than $7,700 for a vacation for himself and Scannell in the Bahamas over New Year’s 2013. That March, he paid more than $3,600 for a trip for him and Scannell to Hawaii, records show.

I bet it happened because he loved his country too much, just like Newt. What a guy.