Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio is gearing up for what he expects will be the toughest of his five re-election campaigns.
He is facing a determined effort from immigration rights activists to push him out. A ruling may come any day in a lawsuit that alleges his department violated the civil rights of Hispanics. A second lawsuit filed by the Justice Department is making its way through the courts.
And in TV ads, he doesn't mention the signature issue that helped bring him to national prominence — a sign, people in both parties say, that illegal immigration is losing its potency.
"Issues in campaigns are like flowers: They bloom, go away and then they bloom again," GOP lobbyist Stan Barnes said. "The bloom is off illegal immigration."
Arpaio, who retains a massive $4.2 million campaign treasury, remains the favorite in the November election. In an interview, he was defiant and confident as always, and disagreed that illegal immigration has lost its political punch.
"I get hundreds of people coming up to me and thanking me," said Arpaio, the sheriff in Maricopa County, the state's largest, which includes much of the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Whatever the relevancy of the issue at a time when the number of illegal immigrants has declined, the last several tumultuous years has trimmed the cadre of anti-illegal immigration crusaders here.
Two allies — tough-talking former lawman Russell Pearce, who authored many of the state's strict immigration laws, and Andrew Thomas, a telegenic Harvard law graduate and once the county's top prosecutor — are out.
Thomas was stripped of his law license by a state court panel. Pearce was recalled, then lost a bid to return to the statehouse last month. "There were three prime movers behind the immigration crackdown" in Arizona, Thomas said. "Two of them have been sidelined, and they're gunning for the third."
Arpaio, who usually wins re-election by double-digit margins, allowed he may have a tighter race ahead of him. "It might be a little bigger challenge because I have people coming after me — the Justice Department," he said, adding that he believed the federal probes were politically motivated.
Both began during the Bush administration. One was closed on Aug. 31, with prosecutors announcing they would not file criminal charges over allegations that the sheriff and Thomas abused their offices' power.
Barnes noted that Arpaio, 80, was already famous for forcing jail inmates to sleep in tents and wear pink underwear before he signed up in the fight against illegal immigration. "He's got so many goodwill chips in the bank with voters he can afford to make a few mistakes," Barnes said. "His brand is solid, not just because of illegal immigration."
Arpaio's new national role has been cemented, however, by his stance on illegal immigration. His tactics have been emulated by some law enforcement agencies and shunned by many others. His endorsement is much sought after in Republican primaries -- Arpaio backed Mitt Romney in the GOP presidential one -- and the sheriff often campaigns for other immigration hardliners. He and his state have become a symbol to both sides in the acrimonious debate.
Arizona remains the most popular route for illegal immigrants from Mexico, but the number has steadily dropped as the economy bottomed out and drug violence and more Border Patrol agents have made it tougher to cross.
"There aren't as many of them coming," said Republican State Rep. John Kavanagh, a legislative ally of Pearce and advocate of tougher immigration laws. Still, Kavanagh noted that many politicians — including Gov. Jan Brewer, a hero to illegal immigration foes after she signed Pearce's anti-illegal immigration bill in 2010 — continue raising the issue.
"It's alive and well," he said, adding: "Now it has competition from the economy."
Eight years ago, there was no competition. Phoenix became a hub for human traffickers. And amid reports of a rise in car thefts and kidnappings, voters picked Thomas to be the county's top prosecutor.
As he vowed an illegal immigration crackdown, a Pearce-backed ballot measure was passed to deny illegal immigrants benefits and ensure they did not register to vote.
In April 2005, Arpaio's deputies arrested an Army reservist who held at gunpoint a group of Hispanics whom he believed were illegal immigrants. The sheriff said the reservist had no right to take that step.
"Being illegal is not a serious crime," Arpaio said at the time.
Thomas declined to prosecute the reservist. Over the ensuing few months, Arpaio moved to Thomas' view.
They teamed up to use a law against human smugglers to arrest immigrants being smuggled. The sheriff launched "sweeps" that sent deputies into neighborhoods — often heavily-Hispanic ones — to detain people on sometimes minor violations and check their citizenship.
Arpaio said the change came about because of the avalanche of new measures from the statehouse.
"I used to be their hero when I locked up that reservist," Arpaio said of Hispanic activists. "I didn't switch. The laws were passed."
Paul Penzone, a former Phoenix police sergeant and Democrat challenging Arpaio in November, said it was well known that if Pearce would get a law passed, Arpaio would use it to arrest as many illegal immigrants as possible and Thomas would prosecute them.
"That's a very powerful and dangerous pact," Penzone said. "It has all been taken apart except for the sheriff, who's the last man standing."
The trio's fortunes began to sour as Arpaio and Thomas got into a tangled battle with the largely-Republican Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.
Arpaio arrested one GOP supervisor twice, even though a judge quickly dismissed the charges Thomas filed. Both men publicly accused a second supervisor of corruption and filed criminal charges against a judge who ruled against them.
Those charges were quickly dismissed as groundless, and the county is expected to pay millions of dollars to settle lawsuits filed by the exonerated public officials.
Many expect Arpaio to win in November, despite his other attention-getting actions, which include a probe into whether President Barack Obama was born in the U.S. and his agency's failure to investigate a series of sex crimes.
Randy Parraz, the activist who masterminded Pearce's recall, scoffed at the expectation that Arpaio will survive. "He's had too much unchecked power for too long," Parraz said.
bobunf posted at 9:32 am on Fri, Sep 14, 2012.
Those who congratulate Sheriff Arpaio for enforcing "all the laws all the time" must have some sense of disappointment when considering the Sheriff's actual record in that department:
From 2002 to 2009 in the jurisdiction of Maricopa County’s Sheriff VIOLENT CRIME rates INCREASED 58%. But in Phoenix such crime DECREASED14%, in Mesa DECREASED 31%, in Scottsdale DECREASED15%, in Tempe DECREASED 26%.
Maricopa has become a “sanctuary county” for burglars, thieves, rapists, child molesters and murderers.
The Sheriff even has a policy to this effect: thefts up to and beyond $100,000 are not investigated (unless the victim is a VIP of the proper kind). Just give the victim a case number so he can call his insurance company.
It's part of the whole "expensive, incompetent, corrupt and sadistic" thing.
Brittanicus posted at 8:22 pm on Thu, Sep 13, 2012.
THE LAST RESORT? THE TEA PARTY OF AND FOR THE PEOPLE.
President Obama should he win the election has promised that he would force passage of another Comprehensive Immigration policy. This would then substantiate that both parties would never fully enforce immigration laws, whether going against the U.S. constitution by presidential authority as we saw with passage of the Dream Act. Since the 1986 Simpson/Mazzoli bill signed into law, everything has been compromised by a failure to fully fund the policies. This has been proven by systematic failure to make illegal entry a felony, the fact the real double layer fence doesn’t exist, that the instigators of Sanctuary city ordinances are not punished by ICE and that the Birth instant baby citizenship law hasn’t been amended in the name of saving taxpayers over $100 billion dollars annually.
America has giant magnetism to people who are drawn here for public programs, that Obama czars have compromised welfare essentially drafted for citizens and lawful immigrants. These illegal entries that skirt our laws know more about our benefit laws than a good many U.S. citizens? This has especially drained the treasury of states run mainly by liberal-Marxist assemblies as California, Nevada, and New York with bloated populations of illegal aliens. Over past decades our nation has been under assault by the poverty of other countries, bringing their unborn babies here to take advantage of a passionate country that in this present climate can no longer afford to feed the world, or offer uncompensated health care. Even more significant is the onslaught of parents and children that lawfully enter our country through Chain Migration.
These hundreds upon hundreds of billions of dollars should be spent on the legal population, not in harboring foreign nations that continually challenge our laws and succeed with Liberal interpretation of our laws in the courts. Neither Obama nor Romney will enforce immigration laws, but the thorough saturation of TEA PARTY legislators into the Republican Party will have great influence and empowerment to propel the Senate and House into fighting against the Socialistic conspiracy or the GOP elitists who want to keep things as they are?
Here are a few of the issues that can be altered by the TEA PARTY LEADERSHIP:
1. The TEA PARTY can force a vote on the ‘Legal Workforce Act’ (E-Verify) and enact it as mandatory in every business nationwide. Those who feel they are not accountable will be looking at hefty fines, loss of assets and even prison. All those who ignore the I-9 audits in not implementing the computer to detect illegal aliens in the workplace will be sanctioned?
2. The TEA PARTY will force a vote on the ‘Birthright Citizenship Act’ concluding once and for all, that pregnant women can no longer gain citizenship through a misguided loophole for a child, just by slipping past Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) at the border or over staying a visa, leading ultimately to yet another ‘Blanket Amnesty’. What about American teenagers, who have been pushed out of jobs that were the monopoly for our kids a couple of decades back?
Both major political parties wants a true end to illegal immigration, but the millions of citizens and residents in the TEA PARTY will insure that citizens and lawful immigrants always get first priority—not pandering to foreign nationals. Incidentally—readers should go to teaparty.org and then judge for yourself, if Obama is Liberal friends in the press are concealing the truth?
ATTN: The TEA PARTY will be safeguarding the nationwide election procedure, watching for non-citizens voting in November. As for Sheriff Joe, if the election for him is not derailed by “Voter Fraud” he will certainly win? Joe Arpaio must fight against such radical organizations La Raza, that are is being funded by the U.S government, with taxpayer’s money.
samkat posted at 5:19 pm on Thu, Sep 13, 2012.
PS: Randy Parraz does not speak for me. In fact, as far as I am concerned, he can stuff it.
samkat posted at 5:17 pm on Thu, Sep 13, 2012.
Last: Do some honest research and see what the backlog is for sex crime cases in the various local law enforcement offices. Sorry that your liberal blinders keep you cloistered in your small world. Ditto for DTR.
downtownresident posted at 1:56 pm on Thu, Sep 13, 2012.
Joe's a joke. A sad joke. It would be nice to see a professional law officer as the head of the sheriff's office, not some bungling old publicity hound.
I wonder who Olivia Cortez will be endorsing?[beam]
phxvato1202 posted at 1:26 pm on Thu, Sep 13, 2012.
you have the sheriff himself breaking the laws of this state and you thank him? state law says that taxpayers money and rights have to be protected right? but yet arpaio for all those years refused to have his dept audited which is a law and requirement so is this breaking the law? you bet it is but your blinders will never allow you to accept that FACT. If anything we need to thank the sheriff for is the millions of tax dollars wasted because of his inept ability to do the job required. we really can't thank him him for his failure to investigate over 400 sex crimes that were within his jurisdiction right? Let's call it what it really is, most of you that have posted in arpaios favor is due to your racists hearts. The spin so many that think like you k33j8, e528003, especially a major racists like chatmundu is that you want others to think you are so patriotic and want the laws followed but yet the politicians here in arizona break them constantly and you have no problem with it, it's called hypocrisy and that is because they are all white like you and you see no blemish on the white of their skin. pure and simple you are racists and probably hardcore too.
k33j88 posted at 11:27 am on Thu, Sep 13, 2012.
Thank you Sheriff Arpaio for enforcing the laws on the books. We are a nation of law-abiding, taxpaying citizens, not law-breaking, tax users.
e5282003 posted at 10:36 am on Thu, Sep 13, 2012.
[beam
] Come on Joe,you are the only one that seems to care if we get over run and over taxed because we are over run by criminals..
Keep Joe,or you may get another Napolitano...
one of the last posted at 10:25 am on Thu, Sep 13, 2012.
No mention of the 400+ Pedophiles that Arpaio let slide by not investigating so they could go out and rape more children.
chatmandu002 posted at 9:39 am on Thu, Sep 13, 2012.
So the Administration Press (AP) is getting involved with misinformation and all egged on by liberal open boarder and pro-illegal activist/supporter Randy Parraz.
Go Sheriff Joe, we got your back. Enforce all the laws all the time. (the liberal/progressives hate it when I say that) LOL