Rosemont candidates lose third consecutive local election

Last night’s landslide victory by Karin Uhlich in the Ward 3 Tucson city council race continues a string of defeats since 2011 for candidates supported by Rosemont Copper Company.

Democrat Uhlich won re-election with 58.4 percent of the vote in her race against Republican Ben Buehler-Garcia, who includes Rosemont Copper as one of his business consulting firm’s clients.

Buehler-Garcia told the Tucson Weekly before the election he’s not embarrassed to have received support from Rosemont executives and their allies in the community. “Why would they not support me?” Buehler-Garcia asks. “I work for them. They like me. They know I’m a business-friendly kind of guy.”

In 2012, Pima County Supervisor Ray Carroll defeated Rosemont-backed candidate Sean Collins in a bitter Republican primary in a race Carroll described as a smear campaign engineered by Rosemont.

Randy Graf, a paid public relations consultant for Rosemont copper helped run Collins’ campaign. Carroll won the primary with 57 percent of the vote and was later reelected to a four-year term.

In 2011, Democrat Jonathan Rothschild defeated Rick Grinnell in Tucson’s mayoral election by 55 to 40 percent margin. Grinnell was a paid lobbyist for Rosemont and advocated for the mine during the campaign.