Since former State Senate President Ken Bennett again brought up the possibility that he would run against Sydney Hay for the Republican nomination in CD1, the Democrats have been rolling out the unwelcome wagon by reviving past issues they'll try to make current issues should, Bennett decide to enter the contest.

The controversies involve his son's ability to avoid jail time when he was prosecuted on assault charges in 2006, which Democrats suggest may have been the result of Bennett's influence; and legislation Democrats claim was introduced in order for Bennett's oil company to use public dollars to clean up a spill, again insinuating that it was inappropriate for Bennett to do so.

Now, however, Ken Bennett is battling back.

Bennett learned from PolitickerAZ that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is obtaining the communications in and out of the office of Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk, who prosecuted Bennett's son Clifton, to look for any undue interference. He wants to tell them they're wasting their time.

"They're not going to find anything," said Bennett. "I never spoke to the judge before or during the case, and I never spoke to Sheila Polk before or during the case."

Bennett went on to praise Polk's handling of the media scrutiny. She "took a lot of heat," said Bennett. "The easiest way to defend herself would have been to say that I was doing that, but she didn't."

He also condemned the way newspaper reporters at the time "exaggerated" the charges against Clifton, saying their use of the words like "sodomized" was a mischaracterization of what Clifton Bennett and fellow counselor Kyle Bennett did to campers under their supervision. 

"It was more like goosing," said Bennett. "The court records clearly show the boys had their clothes on."

As for the clean-up legislation, Bennett said he wasn't trying to profit from it - merely reinstate the prior status quo.

"Back in the '80s, the state of Arizona decided everyone who owned an underground gas tank should pay into a fund," said Bennett, referring to the one-cent-per-gallon tax paid by tank owners that went into the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality's Quality Assurance Fund. That fund was intended to pay 90 percent of cleanup costs incurred as the result of gas and oil spills, while the tank owners would pick up 10 percent.

It was during that period Bennett and Bennett Oil "found ourselves in the midst of the program," after a contractor's mistake ruptured a fuel pipe and caused a leak. 

"After several years," said Bennett, "the state decided everyone should have insurance to cover that 10 percent... Then the Governor, Governor Napolitano, when she got in she and the new director [of Environmental Quality, Steve Owens] changed the policy. They said, 'If these guys have insurance, why should we have to pay?'"

Bennett said he then went to State Sen. Carolyn Allen (R-Scottsdale) and State Rep. Jack Brown (D-St. Johns) to craft legislation to rectify the situation.

"I signed onto the bill because I wasn't trying to hide anything," said Bennett.

"The Democrats want to make it out like I was trying to send Arizona gas taxes to my oil company," he said. "Nothing could be further from the truth."