Rancher's murder in Texas a flash point for McCain

Just a few short hours after a helicopter crew spotted the body of southern Arizona cattle rancher Robert Krentz slumped in his all-terrain vehicle on March 27, the unsolved murder became a flash point for the increasingly close Arizona Republican Senate primary election between incumbent Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, and his militarize-the-border opponent, J.D. Hayworth, a former Arizona congressman, TV weatherman, and conservative radio talk-show host.

Although the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department, which is investigating the killing, refuses to speculate on the nationality or sex of the unknown person who shot Krentz and his dog (which was later euthanized), many in Arizona have already made up their minds that either a Mexican drug cartel thug or an undocumented immigrant killed the rancher. This is due in part to the sheriff’s revelation that Krentz’s last garbled radio message to his brother included the words illegal alien and hurt, and partly due to the fact that trackers followed footprints for about 20 miles from the Krentz murder scene to the Mexican border.

Hayworth adviser Chris Simcox says that McCain, the Bush and Obama administrations, and anyone else who supports “amnesty” for “illegal aliens” can be held responsible for Krentz’s death because amnesty advocates don’t support secure borders.