Mike Baker

Seahawks Lose, Wash. State Democrat Trashes Arizona as 'Desert Racist Wasteland'
By Tim Graham | December 23, 2013 | 11:17 AM EST

Beware angry Democrats when they're football fans. AP reporter Mike Baker wrote up Washington state Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon, who grew angry over the Arizona Cardinals upset of the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday. Referring to Arizona's fight over illegal immigration, he tweeted  "Losing a football game sucks. Losing to a desert racist wasteland sucks a lot."

Washington state Republican Rep. J.T. Wilcox retweeted Fitzgibbon with the comment "Makes us all look bad". Fitzgibbon told AP "If folks are going to take that too seriously, then I'm sorry about that." He went on to attack SB 1070 in Arizona:

Name That Party: AP Fails to Tag Nearly Indicted John Edwards as a Dem (Updates: AP Tags and Pulls, Then Restores)
By Tom Blumer | May 25, 2011 | 12:19 PM EDT

UPDATE: As seen here, the very earliest AP reports appear to have identified Edwards as a Democrat (the age of the item may not correspond with when the AP subscriber actually received it), but the latest ones, including this item found at AP's home site (as of 12:59 p.m.), do not. UPDATE 2: A mixed bag -- The 6:55 p.m. report from the same AP reporters (pic here) notes that Edwards was the "2004 Democratic vice-presidential nominee," and waits until Paragraph 4 to note that the possible indictment stems from the 2007-2008 campaign.

In their 11:29 a.m. report (saved here in case it gets updated, and for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) on the apparently imminent indictment of 2004 and 2008 Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, Associated Press reporters Mike Baker and Gary D. Robertson did not identify Edwards as a Democrat, nor did they identify any of his campaign associates (e.g., Andrew Young, Fred Baron) as Democrats. No form of the word "Democrat" appears in the report as it was posted at 11:29 a.m.

Here are the first seven paragraphs of the AP pair's effort: