Rev. Jarrett Maupin is running for Congress against three other Democrats in Arizona Congressional District 7 to replace retiring Democrat Rep. Ed Pastor. Maupin discussed his hopes and ambitions in a phone interview with The Daily Caller Tuesday.
He has been described by the Phoenix New Times as “Al Sharpton’s former protege,” although he currently doesn’t characterize himself that way.
“My heroes are more along the lines of Jesse Jackson and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.,” Maupin said.
Maupin made headlines on July 28 for being endorsed by a strip club called The Great Alaskan Bush Company of Phoenix. Maupin told TheDC that he thought the endorsement was a “sign of hope” because it came from the employees (meaning the strippers) voting for him.
“I told the business owner that I didn’t know if it would serve his interests in the long-term because my goal is to get young ladies’ clothes back on,” Maupin said. “Whether you’re a stripper or you’re not, you’re a human being. They’re somebody’s mother, sister, grandmother.”
Maupin went on to say that he admired the strippers’ “endurance” because they didn’t have a choice for employment because of impoverishment, and that, “like Jesus,” he was happy to help out “prostitutes, tax collectors, thieves.”
The Democratic pastor is also known for pleading guilty in 2009 for lying to an FBI agent about Phil Gordon, who was running against him in the 2007 Phoenix mayoral race.
Maupin expressed remorse in his interview with TheDC, but he noted that the FBI accused Martin Luther King Jr. of being a notorious liar, and criticized the FBI for being “the pot calling the kettle black” in the incident, since they had “blood on their hands.”
“They did murder Black Panthers and Black Liberationists who were engaged in peaceful actions,” Maupin said.
He hopes that his signature piece of legislation will be removing J. Edgar Hoover’s name from the FBI Headquarters, calling Hoover a “terrorist” and an “evil man.”
“It sends a terrible message to the American public,” Maupin said. “He terrorized Dr. Martin Luther King, Adam Clayton Powell and other players of the Civil Rights movement.”
Maupin is a far-left progressive who aspires to be the “king of earmarks” for his district. He describes it as an “insult” that people working minimum-wage jobs were only getting “$7, $12, $15 a month” in food stamps. Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that in Arizona, food stamp recipients get $126 a month in benefits. (RELATED: Feds investigate Redneck Day at Arizona high school, have nothing better to do)