The Republican Party announced his resignation around 11 p.m. Sunday -- hours after candidates expressed their displeasure with his remarks and a day after the Arizona Democratic Party Executive Director DJ Quinlan noted Pearce's comments in a news release and pressed powerful GOP Republicans to denounce them.
Quinlan's statement, issued Saturday, highlighted remarks Pearce made on his talk-radio program on KKNT 960 AM. According to the statement, Pearce talked about changes he would make to the state's public assistance programs and was quoted in the Democratic Party's news release as saying: "You put me in charge of Medicaid, the first thing I'd do is get Norplant, birth-control implants, or tubal ligations…Then we'll test recipients for drugs and alcohol, and if you want to [reproduce] or use drugs or alcohol, then get a job."
In his statement, Pearce wrote that during a recent radio show there "was a discussion about the abuses to our welfare system" and he "shared comments written by someone else and failed to attribute them to the author."
"This was a mistake," Pearce stated. "This mistake has been taken by the media and the left and used to hurt our Republican candidates."
He wrote he does not want Democrats and reporters "to try and take a misstatement from my show and use it to attack our candidates."
He issued his resignation to party Chairman Robert Graham, he wrote, because he recognizes "that hosting a radio show and the nature of the debates that we have had and will continue to have are incompatible with what our Party needs from its leadership team."
Pearce did not return a call from The Arizona Republic seeking comment on his remarks.
