It’s a common horror-movie trope. A bad guy terrorizes the community again and again until a plucky hero fights back, just in time for the third act. After a grueling battle, the monster is finally vanquished. Then, just when the community is returning to normality, interminable sequels bring back the villain like nothing ever happened.
This week, Joe Arpaio announced his latest sequel after six terms of drama, a conviction and a presidential pardon. This is the movie franchise that wouldn’t end, even though the audience stopped buying tickets years ago. “I’m back!” Arpaio proclaimed on a trailer as the audience groaned, “Not again!” The last person to realize a former celebrity has lost his appeal is the celebrity himself. So it is with Arpaio, who placed third in a three-way Republican primary for the U.S. Senate. That was just one year ago, but the ex-sheriff assumes it was a fluke. Surely, the voters still love him, he muses, forgetting that he lost his last sheriff reelection battle by double digits. “Thousands want me to run for Sheriff,” Arpaio announced on Twitter. “Today Aug 25 announcing run for Sheriff Important day for me. Wife's Birthday & Pres Trump Pardoned me. Ready for bruising, bitter campaign.”
Just what Arizona needs: more bruises and bitterness. America’s self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff” was convicted of criminal contempt of court by refusing to stop racially profiling the people he was hired to protect. Before being sentenced, President Trump pardoned Arpaio, even though he showed no remorse for his crime.
I remember commuting through the tiny community of Guadalupe and witnessed a few of his “sweeps.” The MSCO’s Mobile Command Center sat at the main intersection and helicopters buzzed overhead as deputies peered into the cars rolling by. For some strange reason, this white guy always got waved through. Hispanic drivers around me weren’t so lucky. Maricopa County’s Latino community paid the highest price, but Arpaio was eager to harm the rest of us as well.
During one three-year period, his Sheriff’s Office didn’t properly investigate more than 400 alleged sex crimes, many of them involving child molestation. According to the Goldwater Institute, the department improperly cleared as many as 75% of cases without arrest or investigation. Instead, Arpaio arrested local journalists who wrote about his shady record, a move that ultimately cost taxpayers $3.75 million. We paid $3.5 million more after the sheriff wrongfully arrested a county supervisor he didn’t like.
Arpaio sought charges against another supervisor, a county board member, the school superintendent, four Superior Court Judges and several county employees. The courts cleared each of these, requiring even more taxpayer-funded settlements.
His office misspent millions, burned down an upscale home for non-existent illegal weapons, concocted an imaginary assassination attempt on the sheriff, and led a futile effort promoting the anti-Obama birther conspiracy theory. His abuses of power were legion. Many conservatives around the country ate up his “tough guy” schtick, but the meal gave local Republicans a serious case of heartburn. As Trump won Maricopa County easily, Arpaio was defeated in a landslide.
If that flop didn’t convince Arpaio to retire, his Senate bomb surely should have. But the former star thinks he has one more blockbuster left in him. He’s an 87-year-old Norma Desmond in an old sheriff outfit shouting, “I am big. It's the politics that got small!” But the electorate has moved on. The law-and-order pitch was hot in the early ‘90s when Arpaio arrived on the scene, but today the Pardoner-in-Chief is selling criminal justice reform. Ex-Sheriff Joe is ballot-box poison and after six previous terms, no one is buying tickets for a seventh.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion ... 143484001/
The op-ed is by a conservative podcaster.
The former Maricopa County DA who was Arpaio's partner in going after county officials eventually resigned and he and some of his deputies were disbarred.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan