A Republican candidate to help lead community colleges in Arizona’s most populated county has suspended his campaign after an early October arrest on suspicion of public indecency.
The candidate, Randy Kaufman, was masturbating in his truck that was parked outside a college. The vehicle was near a preschool that was clearly visible from the location where an officer with the Maricopa County Community College District confronted Kaufman. Specifically, the incident took place in the middle of the afternoon on October 4, just before 5 p.m. When the arresting officer spoke with Kaufman at the scene, the then-candidate asked to speak “off the record” — which isn’t how arrests work — and then pointed to both his campaign and a supposed personal acquaintance on the police force covering Maricopa’s community colleges. He even had a name, saying he knew an officer named Jim Hill.
Hill leads the Maricopa County Colleges Police Officers Association, which endorsed Kaufman. (The endorsement is now rescinded.) The point was evidently to try and secure some kind of special treatment. It didn’t work, although he wasn’t formally charged as of late this Tuesday.
Kaufman was running for a spot on a county-level board called the Maricopa Community College District Governing Board. Republicans have often focused their attention on local issues involving education, so on the board, Kaufman could’ve engaged in far-reaching partisan maneuvers. In short, it wasn’t likely that officials in the GOP serving the area would’ve let the opportunity of a role on the board, which lasts four years, pass without action. The college where Kaufman was caught is in an Arizona city called Surprise, which is in Maricopa County. Rio Salado College, where the incident unfolded, is also a community college, meaning Kaufman was caught in the parking lot of a school he would’ve helped lead if elected to the board. According to details provided in a police report, the officer started on the passenger side of Kaufman’s vehicle, and it wasn’t until they went to move to the driver’s side that Kaufman saw them.
Kaufman told the officer he was “really stressed.” Lots of people with high levels of stress don’t engage in public indecency in the parking lot of a community college near a preschool. “Why would you do that here?” the officer asked, per a report. “I saw a guy on a bike pass by you. If I could see you, don’t you think other people could? Cars were passing by you in the lot.” Predictably, Kaufman claimed he noticed the preschool only after the cop showed up. “Don’t you see how alarming that is?” the officer also commented to Kaufman. “That there are children nearby, people passing on bikes and in cars where they can look and see what you are doing?” The Arizona GOP released a statement saying, in part, they “support Mr. Kaufman’s decision to suspend his campaign.” Although this could be enough to be sure of the end of Kaufman’s political career, it sounds like ballots with his name were already distributed.
