Ex-Arizona lawmaker, county attorney candidate running on platform of protecting white inmates

A former lawmaker who resigned from the Arizona Legislature in 2019 during an ethics investigation over past criminal sex charges and racist statements is running for Yavapai County attorney for a second time.

And true to form, the campaign website for candidate David Stringer reflects the same anti-diversity theme that got him in trouble before.

In the "About Me" section of the website, the Prescott Republican states Yavapai County's incarceration rate is higher than the state average and that it sends a "disproportionate share of our residents" to prison. A statistical review commissioned by the state shows that's true of many rural Arizona counties.

Stringer then goes on to say: "Young white inmates from Yavapai County are often targeted for physical and emotional abuse and return to our community damaged and scarred for life."

Stringer doesn't mention any particular race or ethnic group in other writings on his website. But the site contains many references to immigrants and illegal immigration, the latter of which he labels the most "urgent" issue facing the county of about 250,000 north of Phoenix. Stringer's site generally echoes the same anti-diversity sentiment that caused critics within his own party, including former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, to call for his resignation in 2018 and 2019.

The country's Founding Fathers "understood the importance of a common culture," which is why they passed the Nationality Act of 1790, he wrote on the site. The law limited immigration to white people.

"Too much diversity inevitably leads to resentment, ethnic competition and tribalism," his campaign material states.

Asked why his message about incarceration-related trauma only mentions its effects on white people, Stringer pointed to the constituents he hopes to represent.

"The reference to white inmates being at risk in the state prison system reflects the demographics of Yavapai County, which is overwhelmingly white, and the changing demographics of Arizona, which is less white every day," he told The Arizona Republic. "The state prison system is full of brutality. All inmates of all races deserve my protection and they will have it."

Stringer also ran for county attorney in 2020 against longtime incumbent Sheila Polk. He sank $250,000 of his own money into the race and received 31% of the vote.

He's now running against Polk's successor, Dennis McGrane, the agency's former chief deputy county attorney. The Yavapai County Board of Supervisors appointed McGrane to replace Polk as county attorney after she retired in January 2023.

Stringer's history of racist statements

Stringer is a lawyer and former owner of the Comfort Inn in Prescott whose political campaigns focused on illegal immigration and criminal justice reform. Voters of Legislative District 1 in Yavapai County elected him to the state House of Representatives in 2016 and 2018.

Calls for his resignation started in 2018 after he told a group of Republicans in a speech that minority students had become the majority in public schools, "and that complicates racial integration because there aren't enough white kids to go around."

Immigration represents an "existential threat" to the United States, he said in the same speech. A few months later, news outlets published statements he made the previous year asserting Black people "don't blend in" to American society and that they "always look different."

Former House Speaker Rusty Bowers stripped Stringer of his role as chairman of the House Sentencing and Recidivism Reform Committee at the time.

He faced a House Ethics Committee investigation in 2019 after the Phoenix New Times revealed police and court reports from Maryland in the early 1980s showing he'd been charged with having sex multiple times with two underage boys, including one who was intellectually disabled. Records show Stringer, a former defense attorney, met the boys in a Baltimore park known at the time as a hangout for underage prostitutes.

He resigned the same year, claiming the charges were false and that he was never convicted. But court records from the era showed a judge sentenced him to five years of supervised probation and compelled him to attend a treatment center for sex offenders. The case was later expunged. His lawyer, Carmen Chenal, downplayed the incident in 2019, noting that the bar of Washington D.C. investigated Stringer and never revoked his license to practice law.

Tom Horne, the state's superintendent of public instruction who's married to Chenal, hired Stringer to pay supporters to put up signs for Horne's 2022 campaign. He refunded the $1,400 "in-kind contribution" after local media raised the issue of sex crimes.

Before the resignation, the Ethics Committee was also investigating Stringer's racist statements. A report the committee later published included testimony by a Prescott High School assistant principal who said he was "shocked and saddened" in 2016 when Stringer appeared to criticize a Vietnamese student's scholarship award as a negative example of "diversity."

Stringer currently owns Specialized Publishing LLC, the parent company of the online site Prescott eNews. The site regularly publishes opinion columns by Stringer and has also published the racist statements of other writers.

One columnist who frequently appears on the site, Gregory Hood, wrote in a blatantly anti-Black column in 2021 that "few have contributed so little yet demanded so much as blacks," and that white people "pay for their temper tantrums." Hood is the pseudonym of white nationalist Kevin DeAnna, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Candidate should display higher ethics, civil rights lawyer says

Phoenix civil rights attorney Benjamin Taylor called Stringer's campaign statement about white inmates "quite concerning" for a county attorney candidate considering his previous record of making racist statements.

"For him to just mention one group or one race, I find it kind of odd," Taylor said after The Republic presented him with the statement. "Is he playing the race card to get voters to vote for him?"

Taylor is also the president of the State Bar of Arizona, of which Stringer is a member, but clarified he was giving his personal view, not speaking on behalf of the Bar. He noted Stringer didn't provide any statistic to support the claim of white inmates being brutalized in prison, though Taylor added that no client ever told him prison was a "great experience."

A county attorney's job is to "uphold the law," Taylor said, not break it as he apparently did in Maryland or to make racist statements.

Stringer should display "the highest ethical standards possible," he said. "I don't think he's qualified to be county attorney."

Arizona county attorneys are elected for four years to oversee a county's prosecution agency and serve as an attorney for the Board of Supervisors and other county agencies.

McGrane, a conservative who opposes what he calls "woke" criminal justice policies and takes a strong stance against illegal immigration, told The Republic he believes county attorneys should do their job "without regard to race or ethnicity.

"To do otherwise is illegal, immoral and unethical," he said.

McGrane claimed Stringer has handled "only one felony case" in Yavapai County and he's not sure where Stringer obtained his information about white inmates in Yavapai County.

"Perhaps he watches too many movies," McGrane said.

Reach the reporter at  rstern@arizonarepublic.com or 480-276-3237. Follow him on X @raystern.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Candidate for Yavapai County attorney wants to protect white inmates