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I have rewritten the David Stringer entry as the current article contains a number of factual errors. All citations have been triple-checked.

David Stringer is an American attorney, businessman, and former Republican member of the Arizona House of Representatives. He was first elected to represent Arizona’s Legislative District 1 in 2016 and was re-elected to a second term in 2018.(1) As a legislator he championed traditional conservative themes of limited government, personal and economic freedom, and state sovereignty.(2) His signature issues were criminal justice reform and school choice.(3)

Political background Stringer emerged on the Arizona political scene in 2013 when he served as General Counsel to the Citizen’s Tax Committee, a conservative organization in Yavapai County advocating fiscal accountability and small government.(4) In that year he led their campaign to defeat a school bond and budget override for the Prescott Unified School District.(5) In 2014, he headed a successful campaign to defeat a proposed sales tax increase to build a new county jail in Prescott.(6) In 2015 he led a campaign defeating a sales tax increase in Prescott to fund the city’s spiraling liability to the state’s retirement system for police and firefighters.(7) These campaigns were popular with fiscal conservatives but angered public school and law enforcement officials and many members of the Yavapai County political establishment.

In 2016, Stringer entered a contested primary for the state legislature, winning a narrow victory.(8) He went on to win comfortably in November in the heavily Republican district.(9)

As a freshman legislator he served on the Judiciary, Education, and Government committees.(10) In the summer of 2017, he co-chaired an Ad Hoc Committee on Arizona’s underfunded Public Safety Personnel Retirement System along with his LD1 seatmate, Rep. Noel Campbell, who served as Chairman.(11) He also co-founded a bi-partisan study group on criminal justice reform and sponsored or co-sponsored 11 reform bills in the 54th session of the Arizona Legislature.(12)

In 2018, Stringer overcame a primary challenge in his campaign for reelection and was elected to a second term, winning the second highest vote total in the state for a House race.(13)

Controversial Statements In June 2018, Stringer came under fire over alleged racially tinged comments made during a talk at the Republican Men’s Forum in Prescott, Arizona, where he had been invited to offer a roundup of his first session in the legislature.(14) Before closing his remarks, which have been preserved on video, he segued into comments about illegal immigration and the challenge it presented to Arizona. Stringer suggested that high levels of immigration were changing the culture of the state. He said uncontrolled immigration was politically destabilizing and constituted an “existential threat” to the United States. He also noted that Arizona’s public schools had become “majority minority” and that “this complicates racial integration because there aren’t enough white kids to go around.” Stringer’s comments were seized upon by political rivals who labeled them “racist”. His comments were live streamed on Facebook and roiled Arizona politics. The Chairman of the Arizona Republican Party demanded his resignation as did the Governor of Arizona and other leading political figures.(15)

In a widely publicized event on June 27, 2018, Stringer met with civil rights activists and members of the press in Phoenix, where he had been invited to speak on criminal justice reform and racial justice. In what effectively became a press conference on his views on immigration, Stringer declined to retract his statements, insisting they were factually accurate and not racially pejorative. He offered a carefully worded apology “to anyone who was offended” by the way his statements were “mis-characterized in the media.”(16) Despite the lack of support from many Republican leaders, he retained strong support among LD1 voters, easily fending off a primary challenger and amassing an historic vote total in the November election.(17)

Forced From Office Stringer appeared to have weathered the controversy surrounding his alleged racial comments until a new issue emerged in January 2019, with the appearance of an article in the Arizona Daily Independent about a 1983 case in Baltimore, Maryland, alleging contact with underage prostitutes.(18) According to the article, Stringer was not convicted of the charges and the matter was later expunged. It appears that Stringer had become aware that some fragment of the expunged case had been unearthed and he offered some level of cooperation with the story. The article stated that he was not required to plead guilty but accepted a term of probation before judgment for two misdemeanor offenses as a way of avoiding litigation risk in Baltimore Circuit Court.(19) The report went on to say that the District of Columbia Bar Association reviewed the matter before the records were expunged and determined that the allegations were not sufficiently serious to warrant attorney discipline. No action was taken against Stringer. DC Bar records indicate he remains a member in good standing.(20)

Following this report, other highly sensationalized reports appeared in the Arizona media.(21) Although the case had been resolved 35 years earlier, political rivals demanded an ethics investigation. In late January 2019, the Arizona Bar Association opened an inquiry as to whether Stringer made appropriate disclosures about the Maryland case in his 2002 application for admission to the Arizona Bar.(22) Arizona rules require that prior charges be disclosed even when they do not result in conviction.(23) The investigation was mooted when it was learned that Stringer’s bar application had been destroyed in accordance with the Arizona Supreme Court’s records retention policy.(24) In connection with their inquiry, Stringer authorized the release under court seal of a 1984 letter from the D.C. Bar indicating they had reviewed the facts and circumstances of the Maryland case and declined to take disciplinary action. This document remains under seal by the Arizona Supreme Court and is not publicly available.(25) However, in a letter dated March 14, 2019, the Arizona Bar alluded to the earlier findings of the D.C. Bar in support of their decision to close their inquiry without adverse findings.(26)

Stringer later resigned from the Legislature following a demand from the Ethics Committee that he turn over the 1984 letter from the D.C. Bar. His earlier offer to turn it over under seal was refused.(27) Citing the confidentiality of bar communications and the sealing Order by the Arizona Supreme Court, Stringer declined to turn over the letter. Facing a subpoena deadline and under threat of expulsion from House leadership if he failed to comply, Stringer resigned from the Arizona Legislature on March 27, 2019.(28) He remains an elected Precinct Committeeman and Republican State Committeeman in Yavapai County.(29) The attorney rolls of the State Bar of Arizona list Stringer as a licensed attorney in good standing and without disciplinary history since his admission in 2002.(30)

Professional and Business Career From 1978 to the present, Stringer has been a licensed attorney, primarily focused on taxation, family law and criminal defense. He is a member of the Bar Associations of Washington DC, Maryland, and Arizona. In 1992 he was licensed as a CPA in Maryland but is currently listed as inactive. Reportedly, a large percentage of Stringer’s legal work has involved pro bono, reduced fee or court appointed work for socially disadvantaged clients including indigents and wards of the state.

In addition to his law practice, Stringer was an active real estate investor in Washington D.C., Baltimore, and College Park, Maryland from the 1970’s until the early 2000’s, owning and managing residential and commercial properties. In 2004, he purchased the Comfort Inn in Prescott, Arizona, which was sold in 2017.(31) Also in 2017, he acquired a partnership interest in Specialized Publishing, LLC, an owner of digital publications in Arizona. He serves as Publisher and writes occasional pieces on law, politics, and the arts. He maintains a law office in Prescott, Arizona, where he currently resides.

Education Stringer was educated in the public schools of Anchorage, Alaska and Montgomery County, Maryland, graduating from Einstein High School in 1965. He is a graduate of George Washington University (BA, 1970), the University of Baltimore School of Law (JD, 1978) and the Arizona State University School of Education (MA, 2018), with a specialization in teaching English as a Second Language (ESL).

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I have listed the corrections that needed to be made on the Talk: David Stringer page. Please advise on next steps.

Cohwill (talk) 18:04, 6 December 2019 (UTC) Anita