Republican National Committeeman Bruce Ash had a hard time getting a word in edgewise against Democrat Paul Eckerstrom on last night's Political Face Off on Arizona Illustrated.

But when he did talk, Ash got at least one fact wrong when he said that Giffords had voted in favor of the auto bailout. She actually voted against it.

The blogosphere has lit up this week with rumors of polling that showed Congressman Raul Grijalva was in a dead heat with little known Republican candidate Ruth McClung.

We haven’t seen any polls, but even Democrats are telling us that Grijalva has a much bigger fight on his hand than he anticipated going into the election season.

Part of it has to do with the national mood, but there’s another big reason: Grijalva called for a boycott of the state in the wake of the passage of SB 1070.

That’s the kind of dumb political move that results from believing that you’re politically untouchable. If Grijalva had been playing it smart, he would have waited for outside groups to announce their boycotts and then pointed out that the Republicans who supported the law had created problems for the state.
Instead, Republicans were able to say that Grijalva was the one responsible for the boycott.

And Grijalva knows it was a stupid thing to do. You’ll notice that he walked back his call for a boycott after a federal judge blocked the implementation of most of the immigration law.

We suspect Grijalva will prevail on Election Day. McClung doesn’t have much in the way of financial resources for the race—her most recent FEC report shows that she’s raised less than $70,000 and had less than $15,000 on hand as of early August.

But Grijalva isn’t exactly made of money, either.

In another example of hubris, he’d raised less than a half-million dollars for his campaign and managed to spend all but $76,000 of that, leaving him cash-poor going into the general election. Way to blow money on the cell-phone bills, Raul.

And any resources that Democrats have to expend on helping Grijalva will siphon money and attention away from vulnerable Democrats such as Gabrielle Giffords, Harry Mitchell and Ann Kirkpatrick.

Stats wizard Nate Silver upgrades Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' odds against Republican Jesse Kelly: She now has a 57 percent chance of winning in November, up from 51 percent last week.

Read his analysis here.

The Hill reports that U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl appears unhappy that a Tea Party candidate won an election in Delaware and unhappy that U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski would continue to challenge a Tea Party candidate in Alaska:

Murkowski’s decision to mount a write-in campaign risks splitting the Republican vote between two candidates and could cost her party a safe GOP seat.

“I am bothered by anything that makes it less likely that we can elect a Republican, especially in a state where we had every hope of electing one,” Senate GOP Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said Monday.

“Both in Delaware and in Alaska now, it's less likely than it was just two weeks ago. And looking at how we might try to regain control of the Senate, that's the part that bothers me,” Kyl said.

Read the whole thing here.

It's a shame when those peasants you've stirred up get out of control and support someone like Christine O'Donnell, eh?

Less than two weeks ago, I asked Jack Camper, the boisterous executive director the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, when he was planning on retiring.

As you can see in the above clip, Camper said he’d let us know when he was ready.

Well, that didn’t take long. Today, Camper announced he would be stepping down next March and launching a consulting firm.

“I’m going under my own steam,” he told me today.

Camper, who has headed up the chamber for more than three decades, has been under fire from some folks in the local business community.

The chamber plans to do a national search to find Camper’s replacement.

The fate of the Winterhaven Festival of Lights is the topic at a special meeting tonight at the St. Frances Cabrini Roman Catholic Church, 3201 E. Presidio Road, from 6 to 7 p.m. Residents will vote on whether or not to continue the two-week holiday light decoration tradition that goes back to 1949.

The neighborhood event, which costs $85,000 to put on every year, lost city funding as part of the city's budget cuts. A plan to raise money through corporate and individual sponsorships hasn't been successful.

Winterhaven residents recently received this impassioned e-mail from their neighbor Karen Clifton:

WE ARE IN DANGER OF LOSING THE WINTERHAVEN FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS!!

We are at a critical point in our future as a Community. As you are aware, and for obvious reasons, the City of Tucson can no longer fund our Festival of Lights. Due to the effects of the recession, there is no money to fund us. Please make no mistake, all efforts have been made in this regard. Now, we need to move on!

Now we could chose from several options:

1. Stop having the festival after a 60 year run.
2. Fund it with minimum donations collected from the neighborhood.
3. Cut back considerably on the event, scale back and spend less money (still need to have some money).
4. Find long-term, sustaining corporate sponsors (small business, large business, locally owned business, businesses that benefit from the Festival, etc).

The Winterhaven Board of Directors and other neighbors working with them are struggling with this dilemma. They are tired of being the only ones who make and keep commitments. As a neighbor who takes some responsibility for
some events, but who is not involved directly in the Christmas event (other than collecting food and money for the food back on drive through nights), I feel I can speak out frankly!

We (you and I) came to this neighborhood to live BECAUSE it is a neighborhood where people know and help each other; we came to this neighborhood to live BECAUSE we have an Oasis in the middle of the desert, an Oasis with trees, bushes, flowers, and green grass; we came to this neighborhood to live BECAUSE there are celebrations of life for us and for our children—one of those celebrations is the WINTERHAVEN FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS. Without these special aspects of our Community, we are simply 1950's style tract homes. All of the items above create a neighborhood where people want to live and where property values are increased.

The first Festival was in 1949. Last year marked 60 years of Festival. Do we really want to end this tradition? Do we really want to let down the community of Tucson (well over 100,000 people came to see us last year)? Do we really want to stop funding the Tucson Community Food Bank? Last year we gave them $23,000 (which, by the way, buys them $207,000 worth of food, and we donated 33,000 lbs. of food. This food drive represents the 2nd.
largest annual food drive for the Tucson Community Food Bank. Do we really want to tell Tucson that we are stopping this tradition?

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords starts out Monday with another new ad hammering Republican challenger Jesse Kelly. This time, Team Giffords is focusing on Kelly's statement that he'd support a new national sales tax over the current income-tax system.

As we've noted before, Kelly has said he'd support the so-called Fair Tax, but he'd rather do a 10 percent flat income tax because "if 10 percent is good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for the federal government."

The larger problem with the national sales tax is that it would have to be much higher than 23 percent to bring in as much money as the federal income tax. There are much bigger economic problems that come from it, but rather than lay them out here, I'll just suggest you check in with Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist from the Reagan administration who lays out why he thinks it's a "totally crackpot idea" here.

Democrat Todd Camenisch complained last week that state Sen. Frank Antenori was avoiding debates with him after the League of Women Voters canceled a Sierra Vista event when the group didn’t hear back from the Republican lawmaker.

“I’m quite surprised,” Camenisch says, “but I guess Frank realizes that a Marine can kick an Army guy's ass any day.”

But Antenori, a retired Army special-forces soldier who now works as a project manager for Raytheon, says he not dodging anyone; he just had a fundraising event planned with his fellow GOP candidates on the day of the proposed forum with Camenisch.

“I’m out raising enough money to bury him like a freaking fish in the backyard,” Antenori says.

Antenori says he's looking forward to three debates with his Democratic challenger.

We'll have more on the race in this week's print edition.

We hear there's a new poll on the race between Gov. Jan Brewer and challenger Terry Goddard coming out today that will show Goddard within single digits. Stay tuned.

• That little chrome trailer to the left is Tiki Tim's Grill.

We’ve heard that more than 1,000 people are expected to pack the Hut tonight. This didn’t seem to faze Stevens, who was all confidence and pep when we spoke this afternoon. But if things get dicey, it’s not like he can’t just relocate: Tiki Tim’s operates out of a renovated 1970s Airstream travel trailer, making it one of the most unique (and chromed-out) restaurants in Tucson.

Stevens eventually plans to hold luaus, clam bakes and all sorts of other events, but for now, he’s serving pineapple-topped burgers, hotdogs and other items.

A grand opening celebration is in the works. We’ll keep you posted.