Meet Belinda "Dee Dee" Blase, The Christian Pro-Lifer Behind The Tequila Party

You may have heard that a grassroots voter organization called the Tequila Party has been taking root in the American Southwest. Fashioned after the Tea Party, the Tequila Party says on their homepage that they aim to stay non-partisan and hold all political parties responsible for answering to Latino issues by organizing Latinos to vote–for anyone. The movement is officially kicking off with an event in Tucson on June 4, but what are those "Latino issues" they're pushing and who's defining them?

The person taking up the lead for the national movement is a woman called Belinda "Dee Dee" Blase, founder of Somos Republicans in Arizona. According to Dee Dee, Somos Republicans is the "fastest growing Latino Republican organization in America." Somos Republicans are interesting for the simple fact that they do not agree with many major issues other current Republican voters in Arizona support. Namely, they are pro-immigrant. They are against SB 1070 and for the Dream ACT. What makes Dee Dee Blase and Somos Republicans Republican is one simple issue: abortion. Dee Dee and her ilk are pro-life.

On Arizona liberal political web show The Lou Show, Blase described her pro-life passion in her own words during a debate with progressive liberal author of Three Sonorans from the Tucson Citizen Newspaper, David Abie Morales.

The Lou Show also stated that Blase, a marketer at Bear Stearns, went to college at Friends University (her husband, a family lawyer in Scottsdale, attended Friends University according to this article). Friends University is a non-denominational Christian University.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, Blase has tapped her Somos Republican network to organize the Tequila Party in other states with Hispanic Republicans reaching across the aisle to Hispanic Democrats who, presumably, are united on the issue of immigration. But can Somos Republican really keep their opinions to themselves on not-necessarily-Latino issues like abortion? That seems unlikely when you take a closer look at Blase who seems to be a dyed-in-the-wool Evangelical Christian.

On a webpage called prophecy.org, someone named Raymond Acevedo is fond of predicting the end of the world as per the Bible. An email on this page of his site, from Belinda Blase claims that she is convinced Acevedo received a message from God about the bombing of the World Trade Center one year before it happened. On another page on Acevedo's site, Belinda writes of her feelings on Islam:

OUR HOLY BIBLE SAYS TO STAY AWAY FROM GOSPEL THAT DO NOT PREACH JESUS CHRIST AS OUR SAVIOR. MUHAMMAD WAS BORN AFTER JESUS CHRIST WHO DIED AND ROSE FROM THE DEAD. HE DIED FOR OUR SINS. ACCORDING TO OUR HOLY SCRIPTURES, THIS WOULD MAKE MUHAMMED A FALSE RELIGION. WE DO NOT WISH NON BELIEVERS HARM OR CURSES, WE PRAY OUR GOD WILL HAVE MERCY AND BRING THEM TO SALVATION THROUGH HIS SON JESUS CHRIST. THE ISLAMIC WISHES CURSES ON THEIR UNBELIEVERS.

And here's our favorite letter she sent Acevedo

Subject: possible confirmation?

Date: Mon, 28 May 2001

11:41:25 -0500

From: "Belinda Blase"

To: ray@prophecy.org

Vision 122

The vision you had of the elephant with the baseball. The elephant picture is the "republican elephant"? The symbol of republicans is the elephant possibly. The baseball is George Bush. He earned a lot of money when he sold his baseball team? George Bush is a republican. The bull elephant represents strength I think?

Sincerely

Though CSM says the official kick-off event for the Tequila Party is scheduled for June 4, the Tequila Party website has no official information on the event.