God Forbid, Arpaio Running for Governor
There is a report circulating right now, which -- if true -- confirms what many Arizona residents have been dreading for years: Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio will run for governor of the state of Arizona.
ABC 15 is reporting that Arpaio already has made the decision to take the plunge and will announce his candidacy on Monday.
According to "several high-ranking sources within the Sheriff's Department," all the necessary paperwork "has been filled out and is ready to file."
Unfortunately, he may well win. There are two things an outsider needs to know about people in Arizona
- They have an insane, irrational fear of Mexican immigrants, who they see as disproportionately made up of gang lords who make Tony Soprano look like a pansy. Of course, no one seems to have any actual personal experience with such violence or to be an actual victim, but they heard that the lady who put her cat in the microwave was threatened.
- They believe that only Joe Arpaio has been standing between them and total annihilation at the hands of the brown-skinned hordes.
Yes, Arpaio is not only liked here, he is freaking beloved by a near majority of the population. He is the single most potent Republican name in the state -- one only has to look at the number of candidates seeking his endorsement. For example, we have people running for the US Congress in this state who tout Arpaio's endorsement on their every poster. Think of that -- US Congressmen running around seeking a sheriff's endorsement.
Just check this out. A local Republican privately thinks Arpaio is a dangerous idiot, but he still seeks his backing in the election
Bill Montgomery, the candidate for Maricopa County Attorney backed by Sheriff Joe Arpaio, strongly questions Sheriff Joe Arpaio's mental fitness and leadership ability in a secret tape made by county officials....
To Stapley [one of the county officials at the taped meeting], the Republican candidate made himself out to be a real Arpaio critic.
But, as we learned, Montgomery later teamed up with Arpaio in hopes of giving a boost to his campaign. Montgomery mailed a letter from Arpaio to the sheriff's supporters a couple of weeks ago, in which Arpaio praises the candidate and pledges to help him get elected.
We sort of feel bad for Montgomery in this situation -- no one likes to have a private conversation recorded without their knowledge. Yet getting beyond the ethics (and politics) of why the tape was made, Montgomery does come off looking fairly two-faced.
He's willing to take every cent Arpaio can raise for him, yet described the sheriff to Stapley as kind of a dottering old fool.
He also said he's not thrilled with Thomas' monolithic focus on illegal immigration. Yet that focus, of course, is shared by Arpaio.
Fellow Arpaio-haters will love this:
Montgomery related how he'd been talking about serious issues during a meeting with Arpaio when the conversation suddenly turned to "stories about his family, past Valentine's Days, that sort of thing."
An aide popped in to prompt the sheriff out of his daydreaming, and "it was a little bit like -- I don't want to disparage him -- but a little bit like someone coming into a nursing home and saying visiting hours are over now."
KipEsquire:
Another thing people need to understand about Arizona is that its politics are a extreme case of a growing national trend, namely that (1) the set of people who actually vote in local elections, and (2) the set of people who actually pay taxes are (a) both declining as a fraction of total residents and (b) increasingly non-overlapping.
Stated differently, it is increasingly only broke illiterates who vote here, so don't be surprised at whom and what they vote for.
May 1, 2010, 11:44 amJames H:
This could work out, though. I'm not completely sure that people back him as much as a governor as a sheriff. And if he loses, would he not be the sheriff anymore?
People think that Joe is so well liked, but I think it's more that there hasn't been any viable opposition. Dan Saban came right out of the gate saying that he wouldn't enforce any of the immigration-related state or federal laws unless a serious felony was committed. In this state, that's a sure loser of a strategy.
I know that the feds are supposed to enfore federal laws and all, but I also thought that state and local levels of law enforcement also are supposed to enforce federal laws as well. Why would we want to pay for duplicate police forces at every level to enforce the federal, state, and city laws?
May 1, 2010, 11:52 amDr. T:
"... [Arizonians] have an insane, irrational fear of Mexican immigrants, who they see as disproportionately made up of gang lords who make Tony Soprano look like a pansy. Of course, no one seems to have any actual personal experience with such violence or to be an actual victim..."
My brother is a hospital chaplain in Tucson, and he has told me about numerous patients (or DOA victims) who were shot or knifed by illegal immigrant gang members. Some of these victims were law enforcement officers. The perpetrators rarely are caught because the illegal immigrants and their legal immigrant and citizen friends obstruct every investigation, even if one of their own was injured or killed.
In the past, the illegal immigrant communities in Tucson were well-behaved and kept a low profile so that police would have little reason to check on them. But more and more illegal immigrants have arrived since the mid-1990s, and the communities have become crowded and crime-ridden. Gangs compete within these communities, and they spread violent crime to adjacent neighborhoods. Active criminals comprise a small minority of the illegal immigrants, but the general fear of law enforcement means that the criminals don't get weeded out.
I don't know the situation in Phoenix. The violent crime rate in Tucson is twice the national average: more than 1 violent crime per 100 residents per year (in a city of 500,000). Rarely a week goes by without a killing or attempted killing involving illegal immigrants. So, plenty of people in Tucson have been victims of or know victims of violent crimes perpetrated by illegal immigrants.
May 1, 2010, 3:36 pmD-man:
@Dr. T: But Warren doesn't know your brother, or any of the victims who have been shot or knifed, so therefore they don't exist in his (Warren's) world. Ditto for Deputy Louie Puroll. He was shot yesterday by a desert unicorn that doesn't exist either.
Not defending Arpaio, just sayin'....
May 1, 2010, 3:43 pmmahtso:
"There are two things an outsider needs to know about people in Arizona
1. They have an insane, irrational fear of Mexican immigrants, who they see as disproportionately made up of gang lords who make Tony Soprano look like a pansy. Of course, no one seems to have any actual personal experience with such violence or to be an actual victim, but they heard that the lady who put her cat in the microwave was threatened."
I've lived in Arizona for 25 years and I don't know anyone who fits this description. I must assume that the blogger does know many people like this or he would not have written what he did. I'd say the blogger needs to start associating with a better class of people.
May 1, 2010, 6:59 pmBill:
Just because violent crime involving illegals is not happening in Warren's gated community does not mean that it is not happening at all. Get out a little more and experience the real world, my friend. It is full of dangerous people who mean us harm.
Frankly, it is silly, ivory tower opinions such as this (and drug legalization of course) which turn people off and prevent libertarians from getting a fair hearing on their many other good ideas. Preserving one's nation and communities does not make one a statist. It just makes one a conservative who is not an anarchist. And do you really think that these Mexican masses whom you welcome will support your libertarian ideals when they are in charge? Keep dreaming...
May 1, 2010, 8:13 pmgadfly:
I am not an Arizona resident, but I would be fearful of the presence of hundreds of thousands of illegal Mexican immigrants. I do not know why it is somehow wrong to discern the legality of their presence. But I can tell you that tales Sheriff Joe's escapades are as rampant as the newspaper stories about western gunslingers of old that made Bat Masterson, Bill Cody. Wyatt Earp and their ilk infamous to the city-dwelling easterners in the late 1800s.
From what you say, Arizona residents are shouting approval of Arpaio's law enforcement. In a way, I sympathize with your plight, because in the last presidential election, I was forced to vote for an Arizonan who claimed to be a conservative but was not.
May 2, 2010, 12:01 pmIgotBupkis:
> Fellow Arpaio-haters will love this
Well, if this is the case, you should not, it seems to me, give a damned about Arpaio, but be paying careful attention to who his handlers are, as Arpaio is more likely a figurehead than a real leader, and the handlers are the ones who will be setting real policy and taking action.
> Why would we want to pay for duplicate police forces at every level to enforce the federal, state, and city laws?
It's government, dude. Divide and conquer. It's the best way to control bureaucracies, to make multiple conflicting ones and have them competing for attention. That way none of them get too big for their britches, and they are competing for your attention just like any business would.
The other part of that is to keep their funding pool at a relatively fixed level, so they can't do the usual government thing of The Blob (one reason why all tax increases should generally be kept in voters', and not politicians', hands)
May 2, 2010, 12:12 pmzero wolf:
"2 things you need to know about arizonans: 1) they have an insane, irrational fears of wetbacks(...)2) in the racist, brain-dead, addled stupidity, they believe only a fuhrer-like militaristic fascist savior like arpiao can save them from the brown -and therefore reflexively hated - hordes."
damndest thing about "libertarian"/conservative blogs. evidently, once they start getting some significant readership or following, they start tacking left and - just to make sure its clear - they insult the people who dare disagree with this leftward drift. the idiot radly balko did it, ("i think it's obama, the senator with *easily* the most liberal voting record* will protect our freedoms, and if you don't mindlessly agree with every post i write about what a dumbass sarah palin is, while i never once mention joe biden's sub-idiot IQ, then you're banned."), as has charles johnson, the owner of the until-recently conservative/liberal blog 'little green footballs'. HE's become such an obama jock-sniffer that he not only tells his (former) conservative readership that they're racists and dummies, he now not only *blocks* their comments, he goes back into his archives and DELETES them. (it's all google-able: look it up.)
i'd say you're well on your way down that path, mr. "everyone but me is an unenlightened inbred redneck cracker when it comes to illegals. they're certainly no problem here in the guard-gated, high-end section of scottsdale(?), the high-end suburb where *I* live! they make FINE menial servants!!" enlightened blogger writing about that which he has utterly no knowledge of.
i think one of the earlier commenters said it best: "using **your** logic of 'if i can't see the problem, it must not therefore exist", i now hereby disbelieve every single thing you've ever complained about on the topic of 'onerous government regulations'. *I*'ve never seen them....so they must not be real. therefore you must be LYING about them, right? so why would anyone listen to a liar? you can take your naive, willfully blind-and-ignorant ideas about illegals and the slobbering gun-totin', confederate-flag-tattoo-wearin' mullet-havin' boobs who dare disagree with you and toodle off to sell them to someone who's buying, senor coyote. adios, blind man. good luck.
and if you disagree with me, then you, sir, are a NAZI.
May 2, 2010, 1:25 pmmahtso:
As to the merits of a run by the Sheriff: I think he would have a tough go of it. A lot has happened since he was last re-elected and much of that is bad for the Sheriff. His margin of victory in that last race was not that big when one considers that he had a (very) weak opponent. (Former Republican that switched parties because he knew he could not win the primary. As I recall, he did not have the support of the last law enforcement agency he worked for.)
As the post shows, the Sheriff is in his late 70s and I suspect a statewide campaign would reveal whether or not age is catching up with him. For those who don't like the Sheriff, I think his running would be good news: he'd have to resign and I think he'd have a tough time getting elected.
May 2, 2010, 9:18 pmAnon:
@Dr.T And with Arpaio running around loose, the only sane policy is avoidance. I'm totally unsurprised that hispanic communities would be non-cooperative. I certainly would be in the same situation.
Sounds like Tucson is an illustration that misdirected law enforcement causes violence. No community likes its troublemakers, but when criminals are less evil than the police, who can blame people for avoiding the greater danger.
May 3, 2010, 6:48 amEvil Red Scandi:
Just goes to show that the Republican's response to problems caused by Big Government is the same as the Democrat's - more government intrusion into our lives.
May 3, 2010, 7:31 amskh.pcola:
Flaccid logic and lame arguments for your atrophied view on illegal immigration and enforcement are just one reason why I view Libertarian dogma as the antithesis of sane thought. I believe that you are yanking our collective chains, though...you persist in being Pauline Kael-ish.
May 3, 2010, 9:46 amjb:
Linking to New Times is like linking to National Enquirer. Your passion on this topic is clouding your usually sensible judgment.
May 3, 2010, 8:25 pmcaseyboy:
AZ has nothing on MN voters, Governor Jesse Ventura and Senator Al Franken, give me a break.
May 4, 2010, 12:48 pmcaseyboy:
Zero Wolf - I respect what you had to say. I don't have the experience to make a full assessment, but I was starting to get a feeling that this site has "jumped the shark". The view that illegal immigration is some kind of benign development is perplexing.
May 4, 2010, 1:02 pmaugustus818:
Maybe I'm some kind of stupid, cockeyed, optimist/Anarchist when I say that the Mexican hordes are NOT going to steal your jobs, that given a minute there might even be a net GAIN of jobs for all the Arpaio-lovers, that is if there were no Arpaio running around locking 'em in detention camps on a whim.
@Bill "Preserving one’s nation and communities does not make one a statist." Yes it does. Just who do you think it is that is going to be doing all the preserving? The State, that's who. Either the words "preserving one's nation" mean what they mean, or they have no meaning at all. I can agree with the community part though. You wanna have your little podunk community, fine. As long as the Mexicans across the street can enjoy the same privilege of dealing with their fellow humans, brown-skinned or pale-faced.
May 9, 2010, 1:29 pm